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Technology Stocks : TAVA Technologies (TAVA-NASDAQ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karl Drobnic who wrote (8483)	1/7/1998 12:03:00 AM
From: Zebra 365	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 31646

Topro's day job - Part Three Keystone Foods Corporation Inventory Management and Lot Traceability System ------------------------------------------------------------- Challenge: Keystone produces millions of hamburgers and chicken nuggets each day. To help one of their largest fast food clients keep pace with the demands and quality of their products, Keystone needed to improve their inventory tracking and lot traceability capabilities. The system they were using was a cumbersome manual paper trail. It gave them no immediate access to inventory levels which was inhibiting their ability to assure customer orders could be met. In the event of a product recall Keystone would have to dig through mountains of paperwork which involved numerous employees. This recall process could take anywhere from one to ten man hours to complete, depending on the ingredients or products affected. Now, their client was requiring Keystone to provide forward or backward traceability of any product or raw material within a three hour maximum turnaround time. This improved capability would enable Keystone to trace offspec product to a specific lot of raw material, and then trace raw material delivery through the supply chain to identify when and where the product was sent, and who it came from. In addition to these traceability issues, Keystone was challenged with reducing the amount of finished products and raw materials that were wasted due to code date expiration. Solution: TAVA Technologies/ACS utilized its proprietary Rapid Technology DeploymentT methodology to map Keystone's existing and "to-be" processes. Through this joint and rapid applications development process TAVA/ACS was able to develop effective new procedures and automate the receiving of raw materials and shipping of finished goods. The new system was designed using a Radio Frequency (RF) bar coding network to track the flow of materials within the facility. In addition, the new system is capable of storing all material receipts, movements, transformation and shipping in a central Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) utilizing WindowsT NT. Outcome: Keystone is able to trace materials forward and backward through the plant at the touch of a button. They now have immediate access to locating finished products and what raw materials were used in a specific batch for product recall. Their margin of error has reduced from the previous days production to plus or minus minutes. Reports can be generated within five minutes to meet their client's requirements. Automatic data collection assures accuracy and eliminates redundancy in data and data entry in areas of receiving, grinding, box weighing and finished goods pelletizing. The new system assures correct usage of inventory to prevent code date expiration. Manual paper system has been significantly reduced allowing employees to improve productivity. Perpetual inventory eliminates the need for daily physicals. Improved ability to meet increasingly stringent government regulations (USDA). The system was designed with a modular, building-block approach that will enable Keystone to easily expand the system as budgeting allows. The project was distinctive in that it utilized NT server with SQLServer as data repository. In addition, it uses Visual Basic as a front end to SQLServer using the Microsoft Jet Engine and Data Access Objects. There are many such stories of the past years Topro has been in business. They have been around for a while, but not very profitable. Well, no one talks about it, but the roll up of five companies, the ousting of Larry Etheridge, and the movement into PlantY2KOne have been under the new team headed up by Jenkins. Profitability is coming because the performance is already there. This is an engineering company and it is being rebuilt from the ground up. The Y2K will accelerate its growth, but they are not going to be a shooting star that flashes brightly and burns out. The stock is in the hands of the hyper day-traders now, but the company is on firm footing. This is not "Fly-By-Night" II. There is only one sure way to make money here, and that is to have the patience to let the story unfold. Nite. Zebra

To: Karl Drobnic who wrote (8483)	1/7/1998 12:17:00 AM
From: Captain Jack	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 31646

Karl--- there are still many inexpensive (I do not like the word CHEAP) out there and more to come this pattern may continue for some time. The longer it stays in this range the harder the breakout. Actually it should break out this month---- should have long ago but excuses are now going to be proven. I did not expect the POPO.... actually looking to repurchase my trading shares cheaper. Not as inexpensive as last time (5.09), but lower than todays close. Look to sell them in a week or to for approx point gain. As TM stated--- news is required--- not to pop the price,,,but to maintain it. John