Consistently Delivering Business Value
Our Work
Fundamental Technology Solutions has a proven track record of delivering solutions across multiple industries. The following are some examples of how we work closely with our clients to reduce costs, improve operational efficiency, and deliver new business capabilities
Our client is dependent on being able to control and fine-tune their global supply chain in order to meet customer demand and maximize profits. In order to increase inventory turns and provide accurate information to the field in terms of lead times and cost, a global sourcing solution system was designed and implemented.
The solution consist of three modules for Procurement (material costs and lead times), Transportation (freight costs and lead times) and Supply Chain in which source plans can be created through advanced analysis of supply chain alternatives.
Prior to the Global Sourcing Solution, creating source plans was a laborious, data intensive process that involved Supply Chain Analysts merging information from disparate sources (legacy systems, ERP, departmental applications and Excel spreadsheets) to create published source plans. The process required high-value analysts to spend a large amount of time on data crunching and reconciliation rather than optimizing the supply chain.
After the deployment of the global sourcing solution, costs, lead times and source plans are updated in realtime on a daily basis and the system provides the tools for the Supply Chain analysts to perform analytics and what-if scenarios for optimizing the source plans.
Prior to the new solution, keeping track of inter-company margin reserves and releases was a laborious process that included disparate ERP systems, Excel spreadsheets and departmental applications.
The solution consists of a central application which is automatically fed sales data from disparate ERP systems and creates a unified picture of inter-company reserves and releases on a monthly basis. The system allows for the company controllers to identify reserves and releases and the final output are journal entries to the General Ledger that describes reserves and releases per legal entity per month.
High latency upwards of 1000 ms due to the physical aspects of a signal having to travel out to orbit and back down to earth
Low bandwith. The cost of a slice of a satellite connection is very expensive so the amount of bandwith available to a given channel is low compared to a regular
broadband connection
High error rates. Due to the environmental variability during a transmission (line of sight issues, weather related phenomena etc.) the number of packets lost while
transmitting over a satellite is order of magnitude larger than when transmitting over a LAN. The error correcting properties of most TCP implementations work against the
transmission in these situations since it is common that the send rate is throttled back when missing packets are encountered, and the re-sending of a missing packet at
least quadruples the combined roundtrip time.
The existing middleware in place for satellite traffic, while functional, was suffering from high jitter and a large amount of added latency from the middleware processing overhead. Fundamental Technology Solutions was engaged to evaluate middleware technologies to determine which one is the best fit for delivery of wellsite data delivery over a satellite connection, as well as design and implement the new middleware solution.
Multiple products were evaluated; including JMS products, UDP based products as well as custom sockets and MSMQ.
To be able to properly evaluate the products, a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria and metrics were identified and documented. A generic test harness was created where implementations based on each technology could be plugged in and fairly evaluated. Using software that simulates poor network characteristics, tests were performed for a variety of conditions of latency, bandwidth and packet loss.
Oil Field Services – Supply Chain – Global Sourcing Solution
Our client is dependent on being able to control and fine-tune their global supply chain in order to meet customer demand and maximize profits. In order to increase inventory turns and provide accurate information to the field in terms of lead times and cost, a global sourcing solution system was designed and implemented. The solution consist of three modules for Procurement (material costs and lead times), Transportation (freight costs and lead times) and Supply Chain in which source plans can be created through advanced analysis of supply chain alternatives.
Prior to the Global Sourcing Solution, creating source plans was a laborious, data intensive process that involved Supply Chain Analysts merging information from disparate sources (legacy systems, ERP, departmental applications and Excel spreadsheets) to create published source plans. The process required high-value analysts to spend a large amount of time on data crunching and reconciliation rather than optimizing the supply chain.
After the deployment of the global sourcing solution, costs, lead times and source plans are updated in realtime on a daily basis and the system provides the tools for the Supply Chain analysts to perform analytics and what-if scenarios for optimizing the source plans.
Oil Field Services – Financials – Inter-company Margin Reserve and Release
Client is a global oil-field services company with operations in more than 50 countries. When sales of goods or services are performed between different legal entities of the same corporation, tax laws stipulate that margin needs to be added to the cost of good. When such a sale is performed, the inter-company margin needs to be accounted for tax purposes, but released when the buying entity makes a third-party sale in order to be able to demonstrate a true margin on the goods sold.Prior to the new solution, keeping track of inter-company margin reserves and releases was a laborious process that included disparate ERP systems, Excel spreadsheets and departmental applications.
The solution consists of a central application which is automatically fed sales data from disparate ERP systems and creates a unified picture of inter-company reserves and releases on a monthly basis. The system allows for the company controllers to identify reserves and releases and the final output are journal entries to the General Ledger that describes reserves and releases per legal entity per month.
Oil Field Services – Realtime Well Site Data Delivery
Client is a global oil-field services company, providing a wealth of well site services. The data acquired at the well sites is fed to a central location in realtime over a satellite link. Communicating data in realtime over a satellite connection presents a large number of issues and constraints, such as:High latency upwards of 1000 ms due to the physical aspects of a signal having to travel out to orbit and back down to earthLow bandwith. The cost of a slice of a satellite connection is very expensive so the amount of bandwith available to a given channel is low compared to a regularbroadband connection
High error rates. Due to the environmental variability during a transmission (line of sight issues, weather related phenomena etc.) the number of packets lost whiletransmitting over a satellite is order of magnitude larger than when transmitting over a LAN. The error correcting properties of most TCP implementations work against the
transmission in these situations since it is common that the send rate is throttled back when missing packets are encountered, and the re-sending of a missing packet at
least quadruples the combined roundtrip time.
The existing middleware in place for satellite traffic, while functional, was suffering from high jitter and a large amount of added latency from the middleware processing overhead. Fundamental Technology Solutions was engaged to evaluate middleware technologies to determine which one is the best fit for delivery of wellsite data delivery over a satellite connection, as well as design and implement the new middleware solution.
Multiple products were evaluated; including JMS products, UDP based products as well as custom sockets and MSMQ.
To be able to properly evaluate the products, a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria and metrics were identified and documented. A generic test harness was created where implementations based on each technology could be plugged in and fairly evaluated. Using software that simulates poor network characteristics, tests were performed for a variety of conditions of latency, bandwidth and packet loss.