New Software Company To Strengthen OSST Capability

Above: The PALCON team - Sin Chek Yau, Mutia Syarifuddin and Ahmad Faizal Ghazali - with Michael Karlsson

PAL and control system software specialists IA Control of Sweden have formed a new joint venture software company PALCON. The new company is dedicated exclusively to further development of the OSST (Ordering System for Surface Treatment) software devised by IA Control for PAL’s plating lines.

Based in Malaysia, PALCON’s programmers have some immediate milestones to reach – they are hard at work improving the OSST graphics, putting the finishing touches to a Chinese language version of the OSSTjwin software - they will shortly be developing more languages with Spanish high on the list, and they are working on a generic database interface and other new and vital features.

“We are delighted with the speed with which the new programmers are reaching their goals, and are confident that PALCON will prove a great asset,” says Geoff Paterson, Managing Director of PAL. “Naturally, Michael Karlsson and his team from IA Controls have spent a considerable amount of time with the newly recruited programmers during the set up phase of the new company, and found them fast to rise to challenges, receptive to new ideas and stimulating to work with. We know that this new company, tasked with constantly improving our OSST software, is an important step to improving the service we can give our customers.” There are now 201 OSST installations around the globe.

Information on the OSST software is still available via PAL offices around the world and direct from IA Controls in Sweden (info@iac.se), as Michael Karlsson explains, “PALCON is exclusively a development base for our software. Of course customer comments will be constantly fed back to the programmers, but we are eager that our Malaysian-based team devote their time to constant improvement of the software to keep pace with customers’ constantly evolving needs rather than dealing with sales or day to day enquiries.”

Key features of OSSTjwin include the facility to read/write all data in OSST from other software in another computer, and the ability to:

• focus on the network
• run from any client network without the need to install any extra software
• have an open structure for remote access, where the user can link data to other software without modification in the OSST, still with the same security levels of password protection be scalable in many different configurations
• have a low end configuration, which can be easily upgraded later, complying with “don’t buy more than you need at present” trends
• be based on a very strong foundation that ensures continuous development and upgrade possibilities.

PAL EXPANDS IN CHINA

PAL’s new office in the Shenzhen’s World Trade Centre opened on 22 June 2001. There are also two new service stations, one in Shenzhen and one in Hizhou. The Shenzhen office provides 24 hours on-call service, warehouse for spare parts and accepts local currency payment.

The photograph shows Ronnie Wong, PAL’s Deputy Managing Director, makes himself at home on a visit to the new office.