IBM
Austin, TX
IBM hired me fresh out of graduate school in May of 1979. My initial assignment was to port a computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) system from their Endicott, New York printed circuit board manufacturing plant to a newly constructed plant in Austin, Texas. Upon successful completion of that project, I was assigned to develop a control system for the copper plate process.
Each copper plate machine was about 20 feet wide by 100 feet long and had 14 independently controlled robotic devices to move product (printed circuit board panels) through a series of chemical baths and rinse stations. I developed a system to run on a Series 1 computer that controlled the physical motion of the copper plate machine to process product according to specifications determined by IBM's chemical engineers. I also developed an accompanying computer aided design (CAD) system that simulated new processes and allowed engineers to accurately predict hourly production for a given process and machine configuration. These applications were so successful that I was also given responsibility for control systems in the photo lab, drill, smear removal and test areas.
In IBM's older plants, some control processes were tightly coupled to a database on a mainframe computer. For each new batch of product, numerical control data was downloaded directly from the mainframe to the controller for the machine to perform the process. If either the mainframe or the communication link went down, the operators could finish the current batch of product, but could not begin a new batch. I improved mean time between failure (MTBF) for each process by implementing a distributed processing system that maintained a local database of numerical control data at each process area. If data was not available from the mainframe for any reason, the most recently used data from the local database was used to process the product. This resulted in a significant cost savings for each manufacturing plant.
Boca Raton, FL
Contract software engineer developing OEM text to speech software. Embedded C++ code synthesizes audio from input text in multiple languages and dialects. Typical applications are automotive GPS and stereo. I corrected reported problems and added new features to meet quality requirements and scheduled deadlines for various customers.