This was a project were parts were manufactured in one State, delivered to
and used in a different State; not necessarily in manufacture
order.
Parts were ultimately married to an assembly in which the part being
used depended on the next assembly in line. Queuing of the parts was both
necessary and crucial. Accurate
queuing relied heavily on information obtained from external
databases.
Databases existed in several places with information being transferred in concert with the production process and part movement. Written in C++, the control program was in constant contact with external databases via network connections. ODBC was used to provide a layer of abstraction to protect the control program from offsite DBMS migrations. Real-time mechanical input and outputs were used in the control program to store and harvest parts from interim storage. Parts drawn from interim storage created the final delivery queue for assembly.
This system has been running (mostly) unattended for several years.