For downtime tracking, the process is well suited to tracking the operation of an entire process or plant; it is not suited to tracking individual equipment reliability. For inventory management, it is suited to tracking either bulk or discrete production, as its concepts are quite general. The Metrics engine is suited to smaller deployments; larger deployments would do better to extract and warehouse the raw data for external analysis and reporting.
Microsoft SQL Server is ideal for highly available SQL workloads by using SQL Server Always On availability groups. Microsoft SQL Server might not be appropriate for solutions which require a very low resource footprint, since it requires significant CPU cores and RAM memory as well as high IOPS, always depending on the usage scenario.
I think it is unlikely that sql server has disappointed someone, it is likely that someone will come initially discouraged if the needs and problems that occur are very challenging, but definitely have a SQL oriented system means having a solid base to work and on which maintain the their data securely
SQL Server mostly 'just works' or generates error messages to help you sort out the trouble. You can usually count on the product to get the job done and keep an eye on your potential mistakes. Interaction with other Microsoft products makes operating as a Windows user pretty straight forward. Digging through the multitude of dialogs and wizards can be a pain, but the answer is usually there somewhere.
We managed to handle most of our problems by looking into Microsoft's official documentation that has everything explained and almost every function has an example that illustrates in detail how a particular functionality works. Just like PowerShell has the ability to show you an example of how some cmdlet works, that is the case also here, and in my opinion, it is a very good practice and I like it.
Other than SQL taking quite a bit of time to actually install there are no problems with installation. Even on hardware that has good performance SQL can still take close to an hour to install a typical server with management and reporting services.
We evaluate a number of inventory management products; however, none provided the full pit-to-port coverage. There were only AVEVA Manufacturing Execution, powered by Ampla, and ION Qmastor. AVEVA Manufacturing Execution, powered by Ampla, provided a simpler interface, while the QMastor product seemed to be a collection of applications. There were other products evaluated, but they were not yet mature and proven.
Microsoft SQL is slower than MySQL and Access but far more feature-rich and reliable. Access is almost obsolete nowadays, so not too many people are considering it, but unless budget or an open-source ethos is a factor, Microsoft SQL is superior in every way. Many commonly used tools, like Crystal Reports, support it.
Downtime classification has made sense of plant reliability data; whereas, before it was unstructured and could not be used for analysis
Production tracking and reporting. This solution is providing a unified, common source of production tracking for all departments, stored in a database rather than spreadsheets. A single source of truth ensures all data aligns and matches.
KPIs are providing a measurable indicator of performance against company-defined targets.
Increased accuracy - We went from multiple users having different versions of an Excel spreadsheet to a single source of truth for our reporting.
Increased Efficiency - We can now generate reports at any time from a single source rather than multiple users spending their time collating data and generating reports.
Improved Security - Enterprise level security on a dedicated server rather than financial files on multiple laptop hard drives.
