Posts Tagged ‘ERP system’
Three Myths of Plantnode
Posted by jhyam in Machine Truth Blog Thursday, 14 October 2010 21:17 4 Comments
In my many conversations with manufacturing plant managers, owners and continuous improvement teams, I have often encountered a set of presumptions around our manufacturing performance management software – Plantnode. There were some presumptions I came across often when educating prospects on our solution. I thought I’d take a time out to clear up the most common myths about Plantnode.
Myth #1: Plantnode is similar to an ERP system
Fact: Absolutely not, we are a Real Time Performance Management solution. An ERP’s purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business aspects, it takes months to implement and relies on manual plant floor data to be entered into the system.
Our solution Plantnode is what we call “The final frontier to manufacturing excellence,” it fills the gaps between management and shop floor. Plantnode pulls data directly from the machine level giving you 100% machine truth; in other words, it tells you exactly what is happening on your shop floor in real time. Unlike an ERP, it doesn’t take months to implement; we typically have a plant live in a couple of days. Furthermore, our solution encompasses operator engagement, and provides proactive alerts to appropriate plant personal. Plantnode is complementary to an ERP system as the data collected is easily fed into the ERP, in real time, to provide truthful information to the entire organization.
Myth #2: Plantnode is IT centric
Fact: No sir! We are not IT centric at all. We are a plug and play technology that rapidly connects to equipment of any type and monitors performance in real time. How we differ from all other solutions in our space is our rapid time to value and the fact that we can connect to any machine (we don’t need PLCs). All reports are web based so it is non intrusive to your existing systems. Clients are able to pull reports in real time anywhere, where there is an internet connection, whether you’re on vacation sipping a beverage on a sandy beach (via mobile reporting) or in your office you will be able to have a tight grip on things.
Myth #3: Plantnode doesn’t impact the bottom line
Fact: Our clients see a payback on average within 3-6 months. We’ve had clients receive payback as quick as 28 days (http://www.shoplogix.com/ryerson-puts-the-pedal-to-the-metal/). Whether it be packaging giant Grief who realized $80,000 in annual labour savings for their Omaha Multiwall facility (http://www.shoplogix.com/packaging-leader-greif-drives-operational-efficiency-with-automated-performance-management/) or Grande Cheese a smaller cheese producer who accomplished 80% reduction in response time and a payback of 2 months (http://shoplogix-partners.com/casestudies/grande_cheese_company.pdf). Regardless of company size or industry all our clients have one thing in common they all see an increase in production, OEE, and a rapid time to value payback.
In conclusion, we do not replace an ERP system; however we are highly complementary to them. We replace manually imputed data with 100% machine truth. We find between 25-40% discrepancy between manually collected data and Shoplogix Plantnode collected data. We have a plant live typically within a couple days, have a very low IT footprint which also minimizes impact on current projects. Lastly, we offer very dynamic ways to “drive” the solution to identify and establish business benefits as part of an overall justification.
Building from Machine Truth
Posted by gdalleave in Machine Truth Blog Wednesday, 22 September 2010 03:30 No Comments
Machine TruthTM is very simply the automated gathering of data directly from the factory floor machine in a manner that accurately describes what that machine is doing at that time. Types of Machine TruthTM data include the run speed, production count, scrap count, etc. Machine TruthTM can be gathered from sensors or directly from the PLC. The important thing is that it is automatically gathered, it is accurate and unbiased, and it is the absolute truth of what the machine is doing at all times.
Why is this important? Often times we hear from Plant Managers that they know what is going on at the factory floor because they gather data manually and record it in their ERP system or their Excel Spreadsheet for processing. They feel this gives them the visibility they need. Unfortunately they are wrong. Our experience has been that manually collected data is invariably inaccurate and this inaccuracy is costing the plants real money.
Here is a straight forward example. This diagram shows what was collected by the operator – the blue area is the set up time, the green the time running time and the red the downtime. Now the production manager realized they were not producing what they should have been. His conclusion was that they were not running fast enough. So he asked his team to run the machines faster.
In this next diagram, the automatically collected data, for the exact same time period, is shown. The difference is immediate. The setup time was longer; there same two major areas of downtime are visible but more importantly there were a number of smaller slivers of downtime that were not recorded. There problem was not run speed, it was downtime. This customer was spending real CI dollars on trying to improve in the wrong area. They were spending money on improving run speed http://www.shoplogix.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=768&action=edit when they should have been focused on downtime. They were chasing CI ghosts.
Why was the incorrect data manually recorded? Was it the operator deliberately attempting to protect himself? Possibly, but this hasn’t been our experience. Another plant was in a similar situation. They were packaging gum and they believed they could produce more but were unsure as to why they could not. In a similar manner to the above, they collect data automatically and found they had more downtime than expected – their shift was littered with slivers of downtime. When the operator was approached as to why he did not record these slivers of downtime, he responded it was because the machine jams and it had always jammed and he never recorded it because he thought that was just how the machine operated. When they investigated as to why it was jamming, they determined it was because the gum was too big. The plant manager moved up the line to ask why they were making the gum too big. The operator responded that they were making the gum to the specification provided. When asked if they could make the specification tighter, the simple answer was, yes of course. The result: the slivers of downtime disappeared and production increased. Machine Truth TM provides the visibility necessary to make the right decision.
Having Machine Truth TM enables key personnel to ask the right questions and to stop spending CI dollars in wrong area.