Fremont, CA. - July, 2004 - Clarinet Systems continues to expand sales of their EthIR LAN Series infrared wireless LAN access systems into new market segments. As part of this expansion, Clarinet has recently begun providing their EthIR LAN wireless LAN access systems to Mint Components Inc. a mobile solution developer based in Ontario, Canada. Combination of Clarinet EthIR LAN systems with company’s The Digital Grower ™ software solution is widely used in the greenhouse industry for monitoring seasonal and offshore labor productivity and tracking plant diseases.
 

Situation:

The cost of labor is the largest cost in producing vegetables followed by the cost of fuel. A typical greenhouse operation hires from 15 to 50 workers throughout a nine months growing season. Compensated on an hourly basis, workers fulfill some 14 to 15 operations including plant de-leafing, pruning, harvesting, etc.

An early detection and tracking of plant diseases is another major factor directly affecting the food safety and cost of operation. Both the types of the diseases and locations of the affected plants have to be identified for proper action to take place.

Solution :

The Digital Grower™ – an innovative labor management and problem tracking solution developed by Mint Components Inc. (Windsor, Ontario) – utilizes the power of the Palm handhelds to assist workers in logging work locations, types of jobs performed, work results, work breaks, and discovered problems and diseases. The information collected on individual Palm handhelds is transferred from the device's infrared port to the central database via the Clarinet Systems EthIR LAN system and a set of XML Web services. The PC then sends individual performance ranks back to each worker, along with the information about the best and the worst performances in the group. This creates a competitive and productive atmosphere among workers.

Managers and in-house scouts use their handhelds to download information to their handhelds, to review row operation history and current disease list, to log and clear problems.

On the PC side, the information logged by workers is processed into a set of reports that allow management to analyze workers' performance and efficiency.

A set of reports on logged problems and diseases creates an effective mechanism for constant monitoring of crop’s health.

Architecture:

“The Digital Grower is one of the first Palm handheld-based mobile solutions in the world that are entirely based on the latest Microsoft .NET platform. The platform allowed us to significantly decrease the cost of the solution for the end user and proved to be exceptionally robust and scalable,” says Serge Sergienko, President of Mint Components Inc.

The solution consists of the Manager and multi-lingual Worker handheld software modules; the Internet server deployed on the central PC; a set of ASP .NET Web forms that cover personnel administration, configuration and reporting functionality; agents-services processing work records; and Web Services handling synchronization of Palm handhelds with the central MS SQL Server 2000 database.

Multiple Clarinet ESB101 infrared receivers and hubs are enclosed into environmentally protected wiring closets. Conveniently placed close to farms’ cafeteria areas, the receivers are always available when workers or managers need to synchronize their handhelds.

“Thanks to Clarinet’s ESB101 infrared receivers we were able to achieve 15 to 20 sec average synchronization time per worker,” says Michael Rakita, Mint’s VP on Technology. “This is extremely important given the fact that we have up to 50 workers approaching 5 synchronization stations at the same time (usually at the end of the shift). The combination of Clarinet’s receivers and XML Web services that handle synchronization on the PC side let 50 workers be done with the synchronization within 5 to 7 minutes. Our customers are fully satisfied with performance and robustness of the solution.”

“We will most certainly consider using Clarinet’s 8 or 16-port EthIR Switches (ES208 or ES216) for larger installations as the technology proved to be an excellent fit for such challenging environment as a greenhouse operation,” adds Sergienko.

”The Digital Grower has increased our productivity by 15%. Our farm now employs less staff than one year ago. Work quality is up because everyone is now accountable for 100% of their work. Also, problem areas are being reported on a daily basis and we respond immediately. This is a feature that has tremendous benefits because it allows us to stay on top of pest problems and such that we may have missed otherwise,”  reports Brady Tiessen, owner of C&B Farms Inc. ”The reports and statistics that we see help us evaluate our staff and plan our work schedule. We now have quantifiable data of the work being done at our farm. The Digital Grower has proved to be easy to use for all of our staff and has become an important management tool for us.”

Vendors:

Clarinet Systems is already widely known in the healthcare and hospital and medical school and health sciences library markets for EthIR LAN infrared wireless access systems which provide LAN access for Palm and PocketPC PDA’s used by physicians, clinicians, staff, faculty, and students. Healthcare software providers such as McKesson, Siemens Medical Systems, Cerner, Patientkeeper, MercuryMD and others – all of whom provide PDA/server software applications for healthcare – recommend or resell EthIR LAN. Hundreds of leading healthcare facilities and medical schools in the US, including virtually all medical facilities that operate PDA programs, are currently using EhIR LAN for the PDA LAN access needed for these applications.

Clarinet Systems' business with Mint Components represents a foray into an exciting new market segment – wireless LAN access for the greenhouse and ruggedized handheld computer market. Working with Mint Components, a preeminent software developer for greenhouse applications, Clarinet Systems has demonstrated EthIR LAN as a valid, cost-effective, and high performance solution for handheld network access in this market segment.

Mint Components Inc. is a company dedicated to the development of high-quality custom mobile software solutions and data monitoring and notification applications. Based in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, Mint Components provides its services to customers worldwide. Additional information about Mint Components and its services can be found at www.mintcomponents.com.