Here we profile someone or some aspect of WISL to create a better understanding of our operations, goals and people.

Ron Kempel

Ron began his career with a manufacturing company, General Springs Products in Kitchener which produced parts for the automotive industry. Subsequently Ron spent thirty years in the Information Technology Department at the University of Waterloo where he worked with student, library and financial information systems. Ironically, despite his extensive experience at Canada's foremost institute of Computer Science, it has been his understanding of manufacturing that has been most valuable in the projects that he has tackled for WISL. In the past year and a half Ron has developed several process control applications that run on a special purpose computer that is designed to interface directly with the control unit of a manufacturing machine. Some of the machines for which control processes have been developed include a stretch wrapper, a box maker and extruding devices.

The computer utilized for these process control applications is a LANPoint PRO from Intelligent Instruments Inc which runs the DOS operating system and is wired directly into the control unit of the manufacturing machine. The LANPoint is also attached to the corporate network as is a server that runs WISL's Process Management System.

Information flows from the server to help control the production process and data flows back from the LANPoint that provides information about actual production activities. The development system that Ron uses to generate the control process that runs on the LANPoint is called DesignPoint. It is a graphical programming system that is also a product of Intelligent Instruments Inc. Below is a portion of a control process that Ron developed using the system.