Rock Star Promise

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Energy. Drive. Swagger. That “it” factor all Rock Stars possess. Everyone wants to be a rock star, but (perhaps luckily) you don’t have to ever pick up an instrument to reach Rock Star status. Navy Seals are Rock Stars. Cesar Milan? Dog-whispering Rock Star. Serena Williams? Title-winning, court-smashing Rock Star. The legendary MacGyver might be TV’s ultimate Swiss-army knife-wielding, problem-annihilating Rock Star.

In our industry, organizations count on Rock Stars to deliver success. Rock Stars embrace the hot spotlight of the work stage, seek out challenges, and rise to the occasion, generating top results, value and efficiency. Rock Stars are admired for how they perform and subsequently how they give back to their ever-growing fan base.
 
At Avanceon, we have the privilege to work amongst Rock Stars every day. We know that Rock Stars advance their personal careers, conquer seemingly impossible problems, and support the development of future Rock Stars.
 
At Avanceon we promise to help everyone that works with us as a customer, collaborates with us as a partner, or joins our team to achieve Rock Star status.
 
Simply put, if we engage, our promise to you is that we will “work together to elevate you to the solution-delivering Rock Star you are meant to be.”
 
We make this happen by leveraging our people, our process, and our realistic approach to projects and people development.
 
The creation of Rock Stars is our promise to you.
 
On every project.
 
All the time.
 
For everything.




 
Automation Rock Star Moment
We knew we had to get the job done over the four-day holiday weekend. That’s all the time the customer could spare for a temporary shutdown while we implemented the improvements. We had to replace hardware, do new IO, complete the process checkouts and establish production support. Not only that, we were installing an upgraded complex legacy PLC program that no one was familiar with. So what did we do? We set up an around-the-clock schedule, learned what was necessary, and completed the project in 3 days. The customer was delighted, and their people got to enjoy the balance of the holiday with their families.
Platform Rock Star Moment
The Project Manager at the Water Treatment Plant wanted to upgrade their PLCs and convert their old system to Wonderware. Once we completed the pilot program and the company got a glimpse into the world of Wonderware and its’ value, the whole company looked to roll out similar projects. After all, everyone wants to be a Rock Star.
Implementation Rock Star Moment
We were hired to implement an MES system for our client, not to troubleshoot their IT ecosystem. But there’s only one factor that defines success for Avanceon: it’s the success of our customers. That’s why we went the extra mile to help solve their IT infrastructure issues. We supported them throughout the troubled times, worked closely with their tech staff, and helped determine a bad SAN was the cause of the problems. They fixed the SAN, and the instability disappeared and the system rocked on.
Support Rock Star Moment
We love making our customer partners become Rock Stars. That’s what happened when a pharmaceutical company’s chiller system failed unexpectedly. We arrived at the site, quickly pitched in to determine the cause, and fixed everything in short order. There was very little downtime, and our friend at the company was the hero for having an Avanceon “ace” up his sleeve.
Training Rock Star Moment
We love making Rock Stars out of our customers. Sometimes, it only takes a little extra – like when we gave a special tutorial to one of our customer’s engineers. It gave him the knowledge he needed to present the new system features to his VP of Operations, who was mightily impressed. It didn’t take much – and it wasn’t part of the training scope — but it’s the sort of thing that makes us a trusted advisor and not just another vendor.
Batch Rock Star Moment
Our Avanceon engineer went to the customer to implement a batch-making change. When he got there, he found that someone had inadvertently wiped out all the software components that would have made the change possible. Well, our job was to make sure the change occurred, and that’s what we set out to do. Our guy stayed up all night, pieced together information from a backup we had made for the customer, and fixed everything. Our Rock Star took care of the implementation, and the customer was able to run production again in the morning.
Validation Rock Star Moment
It takes more than engineering acumen to become a Rock Star and trusted advisor. For example, our validation depth recently helped us take major pressure off one of our customers. They faced overwhelming regulatory documentation requirements for a new product – requirements that were so complex and confusing they would significantly delay product rollout – perhaps even prevent it entirely. But our process and control experience allowed us to clearly explain the validation requirements, organize the necessary information, deliver the components we could prepare for them, and work with them on the elements they needed to do themselves. The regulatory agency accepted their proposal, and the product came to market successfully.
Consulting Rock Star Moment
Someone else had done the implementation. But the customer asked Avanceon to come in and check it out – and that was a good idea. Over only a few days, we helped clean up what had been a messy install – we set up redundant I/O servers, added necessary tags, and fixed broken graphics published to a server. The customer was so pleased with the Avanceon resource that he tried to fix up his daughter with him. We’re not revealing further details….
Life Sciences Rock Star Moment
The customer asked us to install, commission and calibrate a new pill bottling line – but something – no one was sure what at first — was getting in the way. We dove right in with their project team and discovered a malfunctioning drive. We corrected the issue and the team got the project back on track and made up the lost time. The project manager became a hero, when product deliveries took place as scheduled.
CPG Rock Star Moment
What makes your systems integrator a trusted advisor, rather than just another vendor? There are many elements involved when building a customer relationship over time. One critical component is knowledge of your customer systems. For example, when one of our CPG customers lost some key people in the middle of a 3-year project, Avanceon served as a constant stabilizing presence. Our flexibility, extensive knowledge of the process and production, and careful project documentation kept it on track and on-time, even as the schedule kept changing.
Water Rock Star Moment
How was the customer going to replace hard-to-maintain custom code for their water treatment plant? The existing system was a jumbled rats nest of about 20,000 tags and 150 screens…
Working closely with their engineering and IT team, we created a pilot Wonderware system for them. We arranged the plant into a hierarchy of assets, systems, units, and devices, which made components much easier to find and manage, and we went to work on the conversion.

We completed the conversion under deadline – and improved visualization and navigation so successfully that operator training was minimal and user acceptance was universal. There was minimal plant shutdown and no impact on production – and management was so impressed they gave us the thumbs up to do more conversions. The customer team working with us gave us ‘moves like Jagger’….

Batch Systems Rock Star Moment
We’d done a system platform upgrade for the customer a few months ago, but now they were having issues creating new recipes. So we immersed ourselves in the code and carefully traced and debugged the recipe creation routines. It turned out the code wasn’t the issue – missing data was the culprit. But that didn’t matter; our job is to make it work – even better than expected. We identified the problem, the issue permanently disappeared, and our customer created new recipes for their new product launch.
Project Execution Rock Star Moment
It had been a complex install, and when it was done, the customer’s lead engineer went on a well-deserved vacation. While he was gone, we buttoned up the system and added a ton of extra functionality that the operators had been asking for. He was one happy man when he returned – and he looked like the Rock Star. An added bonus: As a result of our tweaks and tunes, his company was able to squeeze in an extra batch per day that they couldn’t produce with the old system.