Gambro BCT is a frontrunner in the blood bank technology industry. The Gambro BCT you know today dates back to its inception as COBE BCT in the 1980's. They made their start in therapeutic apheresis, achieving important advances in red cell and plasma exchange technology, as well as stem cell therapy. Then they reached further — setting new standards in blood component collection.

Gambro's manufacturing operation produces the equipment that makes this advanced technology possible and according to systems administrator Bob Gassert, none of this would be achievable without the advanced batch processing capabilities of ISE's EnterpriseSCHEDULE.

Gambro's association with ISE began several years ago when their manufacturing operation was floundering under an unsupported package that Bob describes as "horrid". Besides restrictions that made it impossible to process jobs during the day, the software they were using did not contain the advanced features that EnterpriseSCHEDULE provided.

After quite a bit of searching, Gambro decided on EnterpriseSCHEDULE because of what Bob describes as the three important factors:

1.Good flow control through the use of interconnected job streams
2.Flexibility when it comes to unforeseen changes in job requirements
3.Good reporting capabilities

This and the fact that EnterpriseSCHEDULE could handle Gambro's huge requirements of 2000+ jobs per day and job streams that often run as little as 15 minutes apart were critical decisive factors in the selection of the package.

"before EnterpriseSCHEDULE life was painful". The package's "flexibility is tremendous". Bob Gassert
Gambro BCT

The importance of a reliable batch job scheduler in Bob's manufacturing operation cannot be overstated. He claims that without EnterpriseSCHEDULE, the operation literally "could not function". Every day thousands of procedures pass data between different software packages in many departments: accounts payable to warehouse operations to accounting, etc. all controlled by EnterpriseSCHEDULE.

The majority of these operations are mission critical, from inventory movements to advanced manufacturing procedures. More than fifteen job streams that are tightly linked with initiates and prerequisites are submitted every 15 minutes or every half hour. With all this activity going on, Bob claims that he is so confident of the efficiency of EnterpriseSCHEDULE, he "doesn't even have to look at it".
Gambro has also taken great advantage of EnterpriseSCHEDULE's advanced notification features, tying them in with a pager package that allows Bob to be notified of any failure in the job stream instantly. He states that EnterpriseSCHEDULE provides a way to quickly recover job streams easily. This capability is in Bob's opinion one of the most critical features of a batch job scheduler and EnterpriseSCHEDULE handles it tremendously.

Bob was also duly impressed with EnterpriseSCHEDULE's flexibility when it comes to implementation of end of period (monthly) changes to job processing. Through the use of EnterpriseSCHEDULE calendars, he is able to create job streams that are run at irregular intervals to accommodate the needs of his team's month end needs. He finds no difficulty in launching 300 to 400 jobs that were unplanned without worrying about overloading the system.

In summation, Bob expressed his pleasure with EnterpriseSCHEDULE when he stated that "before this (EnterpriseSCHEDULE) life was painful". He finds the package's "flexibility is tremendous" when it comes to handling conditional processing and unforeseen changes in the flow of mission critical jobs. Perhaps he most succinctly sums up his thoughts when he says he feels that EnterpriseSCHEDULE's ability to handle his massive daily requirements has "revolutionalized control of our batch processing".