Cars and cigars continue to rely on 3000
October 21, 2013
MacLean-Fogg is a corporation of almost a billion dollars with operations on five continents. But on one of those, North America, an HP 3000 continues to serve the company. We recently heard from Mark Mojonnier there, whose job title reads, IT Director, Legacy Systems.
The headquarters operation in Mundelein, IL is Mojonnier's charge. This is a manufacturer, one whose corporate message is that if you've been inside a car, the company's parts have been important to the drive. "We form things and we make things," and the processes and expertise at its plants includes hot and cold forming of aluminum and steel, molding of silicon and carbon fiber, secondary injection and insert molding, CNC machining, plus product assembly. The organization even uses what it calls “exotic fastener materials” in something called warm forming.
HP 3000s once broke the ground for Computer Integrated Manufacturing in plants like Mundelein, a village in Lake County with about 30,000 residents. Manufacturing computers usually work in small villages and cities, in part to capitalize on lowered costs of resources. The company just opened a hot forming plant in Savanna, IL this year.
"May our HP 3000 live forever," Mojonnier said as he tended to keeping his subscription with us on target. There's not much reason the system running his application won't, considering that it now has a virtualization future when the company is ready to part ways with HP-built iron, if needed. As for 3000's MPE heart, that is still lighting a fire at the Thompson Cigar Company, too.
Bought in a bundle of 40, its Churchill-sized Victor Sinclair Sampler is just $39.95. Companies using HP 3000s for commerce, either through the stately old-school of catalog shopping or the speed of the Web, can keep costs down on their IT operations using HP 3000s. Like the surround code that's custom-crafted around off-the-shelf applications like Ecometry, Thompson's products -- another manufactured good -- are hand rolled.
Whether it's at MacLean-Fogg Component Solutions -- building items like automotive wheel fasteners and locknuts -- or stocking up the storage humidors of Thompson, some manufacturing companies continue to find good value in their 3000 applications.