Companies involved in a proof-of-concept (POC) project or phased adoption approach typically begin by connecting a single system to the network and enrolling it into a manufacturing operations management system. The success of such a project relies heavily on following the right steps for deploying and commissioning the machine, along with establishing a clear framework of objectives.
Regarding large-scale information systems, network topology plays a crucial role. It encompasses layers 0, 1, and 2, determining the system’s performance, security measures, error detection capabilities, and resource utilization. To ensure an effective topology, it is important to assess and create it carefully, considering factors like performance, security, maintenance, scalability, and management.
Choosing the right machine asset(s) for a POC or phased plan requires clearly understanding the desired outcomes. The objectives may include automatically capturing operational events, and specific process data, enabling operator interaction based on operations, and even auto-creation of jobs, error reason code identification, and operator response lookup. It’s also important to consider machine-specific capabilities, such as multi-spindle functionality, pallets, tombstones, multi-part count, high-speed part count, and its position in the value stream. Is it a finishing machine determining the throughput for a group of operations? Or is it a constraint machine that collects data to assist in resolving constraints and adopting a continuous improvement methodology?
Selecting the appropriate information system for manufacturing operations involves evaluating various options. From legacy systems like SCADA and process mapping to MES, batch-run systems, and emerging operations and monitoring systems, stakeholders must prioritize their desired functions and features. The challenge lies in identifying deliverables and quantifying unexpected aspects, especially with numerous products making similar claims. Factors to consider include the system’s services, distribution capabilities, scalability, expandability, productization, breadth of intellectual property (IP) across manufacturing, IT, system integration, engineering, vendor stability, and longevity.
An essential aspect of successful adoption is the collection methodology. A system that preprocesses events by normalizing and storing them as events into a single source type proves highly efficient, reducing the need for extensive post-processing. On the other hand, systems that collect raw data events as states often face efficiency and performance issues due to analytics and metrics calculations being performed after collection.
The chosen data storage methodology determines the flexibility of the information system. Storing events as sourcing pattern events enables answering both the “what happened” and “why” questions, tracking jobs through operations, recording multiple events over time, and benefiting from an event sourcing patterns approach. Additionally, calculating metrics globally rather than individually for each object in the system reduces complexity and ensures congruent results.
Job management is a critical feature that should be supported by the system, allowing for sales orders, work orders, part numbers, product standards, and operation steps processes. These elements provide granular job-specific information, metrics, and operational states. A structured product management feature should be considered for effective job tracking.
Adaptability is another crucial aspect of a manufacturing information system, enabling the expansion of event categorization and the addition of operational and process states as needed. This flexibility is essential for continuous improvement efforts and tracking new constraint sources or non-conformity reasons.
Once the topology is established, machines are selected, and the information system is chosen, it’s time to plan and execute the roadmap for the POC or phased plan. The roadmap should consist of specific, measurable, and qualifiable objectives that can be successfully applied to the rest of the plant. Internal champions should be selected to allocate necessary production, engineering, and IT resources. Finally, a kickoff meeting with the vendor should be arranged to assess their action plan and determine the distribution of responsibilities.
Downtime is Inevitable. Unplanned Downtime does not have to be.
/in Articles, BlogDowntime is an Inevitable Aspect, but Unplanned Downtime Can Be Prevented. Downtime and production losses are something every manufacturer experiences. The good news is technology solutions like MERLIN are available that dramatically reduce the main sources of revenue loss: Unplanned Downtime, Minor Stoppages, and Changeover Time.
When solutions like MERLIN are implemented, manufacturers quickly realize how much time and revenue is lost with traditional strategies that are manual, time-consuming, and ineffective.
Based on more than 25 years of experience in manufacturing, we’ve outlined the top 3 profit killers in the industry and how they can be avoided.
Minor stoppages are typically the most hidden factors of profit loss, with dramatically more impact on downtime and revenue than manufacturers realize.
Traditional manual, paper-based systems rarely capture minor stoppages, and the data is often unreliable.
MERLIN, along with its IIOT technology solutions, captures every downtime event and the root cause of each stoppage.
Example: A packaging manufacturer manually tracked stoppages but only captured unplanned downtime lasting 5 minutes or more.
The manufacturer implemented MERLIN’s Tempus Enterprise Edition platform to gain real-time visibility into machine-level performance, including all stoppages.
MERLIN identified micro stops in just one week, totalling 7 hours. These were unplanned stops that were previously not recorded. The platform also alerted operators at the time of each stoppage so problems could be fixed as they happened.
Downtime is the largest source of lost production time and revenue. Yet, it’s estimated that 80% of manufacturers cannot accurately calculate their downtime or understand the costs associated with lost production.
MERLIN Tempus provides real-time insight into the source of unplanned downtime, including which machines have the most occurring faults and the most aggregated downtime.
Changeover time accounts for the largest source of overall downtime. Yet, most manufacturers have little insight into how long changeovers take or what they can do to reduce changeover time.
A SMED initiative (Single Minute Exchange of Dies) is the standard technique for analyzing and reducing the time it takes to complete equipment changeovers. Most SMED initiatives are manual projects using Excel spreadsheets and stopwatches.
MERLIN Tempus accurately compares estimated changeovers vs actual and accelerates cost savings.
Are you ready to stop the profit killers in your manufacturing organization? It’s easier than you think. Rapid implementation of MERLIN Tempus means you’ll have visibility into your plant, line, and machine data in just days! Contact an expert from Memex today to learn more.
Essential Industry 4.0
/in Articles, BlogIn today’s manufacturing landscape, unplanned downtime is one of the leading causes of lost productivity, resulting in delays, dissatisfied customers, and substantial revenue losses. Recent studies estimate that this issue alone costs industrial manufacturers a staggering $50 billion annually. However, the solution lies in embracing Industry 4.0, the digital transformation of manufacturing, which leverages data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other advanced technologies to enhance productivity, agility, customer satisfaction, and sustainability¹.
Despite the immense potential of Industry 4.0, many manufacturers still struggle to scale up their efforts and fully realize the value of their digital transformations². Financial hurdles, organizational challenges, and technology roadblocks are among the obstacles they face².
The cost of not adopting Industry 4.0 can be substantial, as evidenced by the average cost of an hour of downtime for a factory, estimated to be $260,000⁴. However, implementing Industry 4.0 solutions, such as predictive maintenance, can drastically reduce these costs³. Moreover, failing to embrace Industry 4.0 technologies means missed opportunities for improving customer service, delivery lead times, employee satisfaction, and environmental impact¹.
Industry 4.0 goes beyond addressing downtime and offers transformative benefits for manufacturers. It represents the current era of connectivity, advanced analytics, automation, and advanced manufacturing technology that has been revolutionizing global business for years². While small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) may face challenges in adopting Industry 4.0 due to limited resources and knowledge, there are also advantageous trends for them. These include new business models, value-added services, networking, collaboration, increased flexibility, and enhanced quality¹.
SMEs should not underestimate the potential of Industry 4.0. By investing in research and development related to Industry 4.0, they can tap into a market with an estimated value creation potential of $3.7 trillion for manufacturers and suppliers by 2025². This represents an unprecedented opportunity for SMEs to innovate and compete globally.
In conclusion, Industry 4.0 is not a mere buzzword but a necessity for manufacturers aiming to remain competitive and drive growth. With the significant costs associated with unplanned downtime and the tremendous potential of Industry 4.0, overcoming the challenges and embracing this digital transformation is essential. By adopting Industry 4.0 technologies, businesses can unlock increased productivity, customer satisfaction, and sustainability. SMEs, in particular, should recognize the beneficial trends and seize the opportunity to innovate and thrive in the global market. The future belongs to those who adapt and evolve with Industry 4.0.
If you have any further questions about Industry 4.0 or need more information, please ask!
How to plan for a successful POC
/in Articles, BlogCompanies involved in a proof-of-concept (POC) project or phased adoption approach typically begin by connecting a single system to the network and enrolling it into a manufacturing operations management system. The success of such a project relies heavily on following the right steps for deploying and commissioning the machine, along with establishing a clear framework of objectives.
Regarding large-scale information systems, network topology plays a crucial role. It encompasses layers 0, 1, and 2, determining the system’s performance, security measures, error detection capabilities, and resource utilization. To ensure an effective topology, it is important to assess and create it carefully, considering factors like performance, security, maintenance, scalability, and management.
Choosing the right machine asset(s) for a POC or phased plan requires clearly understanding the desired outcomes. The objectives may include automatically capturing operational events, and specific process data, enabling operator interaction based on operations, and even auto-creation of jobs, error reason code identification, and operator response lookup. It’s also important to consider machine-specific capabilities, such as multi-spindle functionality, pallets, tombstones, multi-part count, high-speed part count, and its position in the value stream. Is it a finishing machine determining the throughput for a group of operations? Or is it a constraint machine that collects data to assist in resolving constraints and adopting a continuous improvement methodology?
Selecting the appropriate information system for manufacturing operations involves evaluating various options. From legacy systems like SCADA and process mapping to MES, batch-run systems, and emerging operations and monitoring systems, stakeholders must prioritize their desired functions and features. The challenge lies in identifying deliverables and quantifying unexpected aspects, especially with numerous products making similar claims. Factors to consider include the system’s services, distribution capabilities, scalability, expandability, productization, breadth of intellectual property (IP) across manufacturing, IT, system integration, engineering, vendor stability, and longevity.
An essential aspect of successful adoption is the collection methodology. A system that preprocesses events by normalizing and storing them as events into a single source type proves highly efficient, reducing the need for extensive post-processing. On the other hand, systems that collect raw data events as states often face efficiency and performance issues due to analytics and metrics calculations being performed after collection.
The chosen data storage methodology determines the flexibility of the information system. Storing events as sourcing pattern events enables answering both the “what happened” and “why” questions, tracking jobs through operations, recording multiple events over time, and benefiting from an event sourcing patterns approach. Additionally, calculating metrics globally rather than individually for each object in the system reduces complexity and ensures congruent results.
Job management is a critical feature that should be supported by the system, allowing for sales orders, work orders, part numbers, product standards, and operation steps processes. These elements provide granular job-specific information, metrics, and operational states. A structured product management feature should be considered for effective job tracking.
Adaptability is another crucial aspect of a manufacturing information system, enabling the expansion of event categorization and the addition of operational and process states as needed. This flexibility is essential for continuous improvement efforts and tracking new constraint sources or non-conformity reasons.
Once the topology is established, machines are selected, and the information system is chosen, it’s time to plan and execute the roadmap for the POC or phased plan. The roadmap should consist of specific, measurable, and qualifiable objectives that can be successfully applied to the rest of the plant. Internal champions should be selected to allocate necessary production, engineering, and IT resources. Finally, a kickoff meeting with the vendor should be arranged to assess their action plan and determine the distribution of responsibilities.
Annual General Meeting 2023
/in Events, Recent NewsWhy do you need a monitoring system?
/in BlogWhy do you need a monitoring system? The most obvious and usually the initial reason is real-time visibility and utilization measurement. That is what most of the monitoring systems espouse doing. Let me qualify the statement. In the most basic configuration with machine-only reporting, the results are long and /or frequent IDLE conditions. Basic utilization as a percentage and real-time “uptime/downtime” visuals. This approach falls short because there is no easy identification of the root cause of IDLE events. Furthermore, the possibility of serious false-positive events is likely because circumstances or conditions, if tracked, would likely identify scheduled breaks, meetings, setup time, change-over, material conveyance, missing personnel, etc. These lightweight and cheap monitoring systems are simple to employ but lose value once running for a while. Furthermore, most are in the cloud, introducing latency and data security issues. The next level of monitoring supports an operator interface for interaction with the system. Most interfaces allow for an operator to classify an unknown downtime event. This adds granularity to downtime to better assist in root cause analysis. However, such a feature available across the host of monitoring packages has no consistency of options. Whereas some have a set or a limited number of reason codes, others are extremely flexible in providing custom reason selection for each machine to match the operation type. Issues arising on a laser are far different than issues arising with welding or on a press or multi-spindle CNC. Other more sophisticated HMIs provide advanced features such as ticket generation, checklists, work instructions, operator-guided e-alerts, operational triggers, barcode support, history editor, real-time commenting, etc. (MERLIN). Then the ability to manage jobs or OpSteps further separates the field. Recording activity against a job or OpStep is critical for any facility, especially for Job shops, mould shops, prototyping shops, or high-value, low-volume shops. If a shop collects shift utilization without job information, it is unlikely that job and shop-related events are correctly recorded and classified as negatively impacting utilization. Adding jobs or OpSteps into the monitoring system introduces the performance metric, which is key to throughput measurement. Just because a shop minimizes downtime doesn’t automatically improve all aspects of the operation. How fast a machine runs and whether it’s producing quality parts is just as essential. Does the system employed support true OEE based on product standards, cut time and material conveyance time rather than just “Cycle” time? Does the system employed provide for both good parts and reject part categorization? Does the system employed support operator login and logout, non-machine-related activity, and operator-centric metrics? This level of event collection is not found in cheaper, low-end products. Ultimately, the system should be more of an operations management system that leverages custom event types, such as machine overrides, follow-on automation and robotics, and inferred machine events, such as starved or blocked. It should employ triggers to infer conditions, manage output, alert teams, send or retrieve data from other systems, and be future-proofed to expand its function, features and integration across the enterprise. Finally, a system must be easy to roll out. Simple to connect assets, flexible enough to represent information unique to the operation. It must provide tools for production, management, supervision, engineering, Quality Control, and the operator on the floor. The latest recommendation from cyber-security firms is that such systems should reside within the organization’s four walls and not expose the company or its data in the cloud.
The emerging consensus is that entry-level, SaaS-based monitoring systems need more flexible, accurate, and resolution tools for operational issues. A good operations management system connects the floor quickly and effectively. It provides an accurate real-time data flow to the corporate monolithic enterprise tools through real-time subscription to integrated OPC UA servers. Such a system is the perfect production tool and middleware for an organization.
You do not want to be the person who selected a solution based on price or perceived ease of use. As discussed, these usually fail to address an organization’s issues. Nor do you want to be the person who followed the market speak and bought into a large toolkit approach which requires 5x services, custom programmers and months of integration to produce even the simplest of feature sets. Nor do you want to be the author of a skunkworks internal development that drains resources while recreating the wheel for the nth time, only to once again be orphaned as resources move on.
MERLIN Tempus can deliver all of the features and functions described. It can be rolled out with a fixed-price project with rapid deliverables. It can connect to ANY machine or operation. MERLIN can save stalled or failed projects from monolithic systems by providing simple connectivity to all machines and operations and serving them up to the enterprise system.
Ultimately, you are the one who can articulate what your expectations are for any system. But any system worth considering must provide information for the following:
If you keep these points in mind, you will not stray from an excellent Manufacturing Operations Management system (MOMs)