A friend of our family was visiting from Japan this past spring and we were having a casual conversation about the Haeiwacom products over dinner.

With the earthquake and tsunami still fresh in her mind, she commented that this system sounded perfect for tracking incidents and aid requests during a natural catastrophe. The idea would be that requests for aid would be entered into the system via the web and then the response could be tracked and communicated to all interested parties on a real-time basis.

Two other observations:

• With all the disruption in power, cell phones, etc., people in Japan were still able to get to the Internet somehow
• There was a real problem with people that needed assistance in finding out the status of the response.

This was certainly a different way of looking at the systems. However, we brainstormed that disaster relief is similar to a customer service application. The systems had been successfully applied in that context before, so we decided to see if we could configure a demo implementation.

As we configured the system, several issues emerged:

• Field labels would need to change - for example, "Unit ID" should be relabeled to "Incident ID"
• The ability to rapidly implement the system "on-the-fly" was critical
• If the Internet wasn't initially available, could a field stand-alone system be implemented?
• What about support for foreign language, such as Kanji lettering in Japan?

So our developers went to work...

While parameterizing the field labels involved a global change that affected virtually every module in the system, it turned out to be a reasonably simple (if somewhat tedious) change. This turned out to be a desirable enhancement that was later incorporated into the latest release of the system.

Rapid implementation was always a feature of the system. Because it is a "cloud/SAAS" application, this ability is enhanced. A system can be activated and configured in a day or so, if needed.

The system is built with standards-based "off-the-shelf" components, so a standalone field implementation is feasible. A group of 20-30 users could be supported with a server image installed on a notebook computer. An ad-hoc wireless network to the users would complete the picture. Since the system is designed as a small footprint, fast response system communication via cell modems (or IPads and tablets) was also feasible.

The Kanji capability was a little trickier since it involved both the user interfaces and the database configuration. After some headscratching, one of our bright young developers cracked that one. This proved to be a desirable feature that was incorporated into our latest release.

At the end of it all, we had a working system that would track incidents and response - with the displays in kanji! All in all, an interesting and useful exercise involving out-of-the-box thinking. Whether this sort of implemementation has any commercial potential remains to be seen - NGO's, aid associations, FEMA?

Norm Plummer, President - Haeiwacom, Inc.

Haeiwacom provides real-time track and trace solutions for manufacturing and service applications. Consisting of process control, warehouse management and document management modules, the Haeiwacom solutions are delivered as software as a service resulting in cost savings and straightforward, practical implementations.

Web: www.haeiwacom.com