BCS Oxfordshire

What’s Hot?

Three speakers presented their ideas for new technology applications: an easy to use web presence for takeaway restaurants, a communications gadget for tour groups, and an advertising-funded service providing email and web calendaring for local clubs and societies.

Presenters were questioned by the audience and by our distinguished expert panellists, Dr Jan Hruska, co-founder and Director of Sophos, Eileen Modral, who manages the Oxford Investment Opportunity Network (OION), Jeff Barr, Senior Manager of Web Services Evangelism with Amazon, and branch webmaster Adrian Walmsley.

When the audience voted at the end of the evening, only two votes separated the three contenders. The winner was David Langer for groupspaces.

IT at JET – A Challenging Fusion Research Environment

Our January speaker, Sverker Griph, gave us a brief rundown of the history of fission and fusion, starting with the failed physics teacher, working in the Bern patent office, who published four ground-breaking papers in 1905 and introduced e=mc**2 to the world.

JET was set up to pursue the goal of clean electricity from nuclear fusion. It provides many challenges: for the IT people the huge amount of data which the experiments generate in a very short time, and for the national grid the challenge of handling a sudden demand for up to 1.2GW to power the experiment.

Open Evening at Science Oxford

The 7th of November was a showcase night for the Oxford branch of the British Computer Society on its 50th anniversary year, 2007.

A stunning venue of Science Oxford was used to promote the services that the BCS offers both its members and non members. Wine and Millets farm cheese was on offer to refresh our guests.

The venue offered 2 rooms, a presentation room which was manned by committee members offering information and advice to those who sought to find out more about the BCS. Lots of leaflets and other information packs were available along with some fun BCS 50th branded items for our guests to take home.
Meanwhile upstairs in Hands on guests were toying over the puzzles and exhibits on offer from 8 till 9 p.m.

Many mini competitions and quizzes were held over the evening. These included a facts based quiz for the visitors to hands on and a wine tasting quiz in the main presentation room.

Come the end of the evening at 9 p.m prizes were given out for participants. Seven BCS branded carry bags were won by those who scored highly in the ‘Hands on’ quiz. A BCS branded Cross pen set was won in a BCS knockout quiz. Theatre Vouchers were won by the luck of Bingo balls and we presented the winner of the wine tasting competition with a wine tasting guide CD.

In total near 50 people attended with a spread of members, non members and a good presence from our YPG membership. Lots of fun was had by all, not least the organisers and we wish to thank our membership for a wonderful 50 years and hope we continue to go from strength to strength.

How Green is IT?

Our speaker was Liam Newcombe, secretary of the BCS Data Centre Specialist Group, which is raising the awareness of just how "Green" we are in the IT industry.

 Liam gave us the real facts and figures with information about what we as an industry are doing and can do about it.

The pre-meeting refreshments were sponsored by One-Click, a new UK company offering intelligent switches to help reduce electrical waste. Demo models were on show on the night, and One-Click are offering a special discount valid for one month from the meeting.

Visit to Unipart Advanced Logistics Centre

In a departure from our usual meeting location in the centre of Oxford, over 30 people travelled to Unipart’s global Head Office on the outskirts of Cowley to learn about how they are using technology, including RFID, to improve logistics processes for their customers.

Unipart is one of Europe’s leading independent providers of third party logistics and distribution services. It was formed after a management and employee buy-out from British Leyland in 1987 and has developed into a major international company with a turnover of £1.2bn. It employs over 10,000 staff and focuses on the Manufacturing, Rail, Automotive, Leisure & Marine and Logistics & Business Services sectors. Unipart has been a pioneer of the Lean operating system originally developed in Japan by Honda and Toyota. The company culture is one of continuous process improvement and although many organisations claim to follow this, it really did seem intrinsic to Unipart’s ways of working. As part of this, it was interesting to note that "Our Contribution Counts" quality circles had saved Unipart over £5.5m so far. Unipart was now providing process consultancy services to a number of major customers outside of the Logistics area, including a major government department.

After an introduction to Unipart from Gareth Jenkins, Sales Director, in the Unipart Conference Centre, we made our way across the site to the Advanced Logistics Centre where Phil Wood, Head of Systems Practice, explained how Unipart used this facility to model the physical logistics processes for customers and worked with them on improvement. This facility could be configured to physically model each of the steps in the supply chain from manufacture to retail shop sales. Of particular interest to the audience was the use of RFID to improve picking accuracy, tracking distribution and controlling stock. RFID "tags" could be applied to containers, pallets, roll cages, boxes or individual items according to the customer requirements. Tags could be passive (only read by a reader) or active (emitting a radio signal) and could be used for different ranges for different applications. They also came in different form factors including paper labels and nails that could be hammered into wood.

It was clear from the visit that there are many applications for RFID but to really take advantage of the technology required a detailed understanding of how the supply chain processes could be improved and the careful selection of the right solution.