Dell USA L P

Robert King

Roger W Wong

David Blake

A system for generating data for driving a manufacturing process is described. A symbiotic relationship is established between two Windows NT&reg; system services, including a single instance of a &ldquo;Sequencer&rdquo; service, which provides the command, control, and communication for all work in progress, and multiple instances of a &ldquo;Quantum&rdquo; service, which manages the execution of a unit of work on command from the Sequencer. All configuration information for the system is stored in a system registry as predefined structures. Registry key entries define the names of the installed Quantum services, as well as the configuration dynamic linked library (&ldquo;DLL&rdquo;) image to be loaded by and the sequence number for each Quantum. The Sequencer manages the start up of the installed Quantum services and synchronizes with the created message queues. The Sequencer manages all work in progress and maintains the state of each unit of work. The Sequencer passes work from one Quantum services message queue to the next, based on the Quantum's registry key entry for sequence number. This sequencing is continued until all defined sequences, that is, all Quantum services, have been successfully executed in turn. One of the Quantum services provides commands to the Sequencer to create a work object associated with a machine to be assembled. If a single Quantum sequence process fails, the Sequencer will log the error and discard that work object, preventing any further processing on it.

Automated system and method for generating data to drive a manufacturing process

A dynamic listener server architecture in which a DUT broadcasts a network package onto a LAN and each of a set of listener servers connected to the LAN responds to the DUT broadcast with an individual packet containing its network address. The DUT receives these packets and uses the first one it receives as the primary listener server until a subsequent broadcast by the DUT when either the DUT is rebooted and assumes itself in an unknown LAN or when the connection to the selected listener server fails and it is now looking for another listener server on the same LAN. The network address of the selected listener server is cached by the DUT and used in repeated sessions.

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Robert King