How a Digital Shop Floor Management Platform Improves Your OEE

How a Digital Shop Floor Management Platform Improves Your OEE With COVID-19, making the digital shift even more important, it’s time to say goodbye to manual and paper workflows in mass production factories. Now its time to move towards Digital Shop Floor Management! Digitization is the way to go with Industry 4.0 as this is key to overall equipment efficiency worldwide (85%). In fact, as per Deloitte, 73 % of U.S. factories were moving ahead with Smart Factory initiatives as of late 2019. OEE is a lean-to-continuous improvement metric measuring the 3 critical manufacturing pillars of Availability, Performance and Quality. An OEE score is described as a %. The efficient way to calculate OEE is: OEE% = Availability x Performance x Quality This score is used to describe the overall efficiency of a single machine, a production line, or an entire shop floor. It provides an indication of manufacturing performance without requiring manufacturers to explore multiple KPIs. This is why savvy production industries are investing in digital shop floor management software to improve OEE. Get Real-Time Performance Monitoring and Control MAPP EYE gives you real-time Production Monitoring & Control by pointing to production performance concerns and allowing your team to acknowledge in the right way. As your team becomes more dynamic, concerns are managed more efficiently or eliminated completely. Features include OEE performance, faults, downtime tracking with root cause identification, tracking run time is one of the ways to get clarity of where to improve OEE. If long downtime events are being tracked often in any section of a facility, there is likely scope for improvement. Minimizing downtime and waiting periods between manufacturing processes is a simple way to improve run time (availability) and hence improve OEE.  Utilize Extendable/ Customize OEE Reports Kneo’s MAPP platform provides out-of-the-box features. Key reports on OEE and a few other standard performance indicators such as an MTTR (mean time to repair) & MTBF (mean time between failure). Data is automatically gathered from control systems with little or no changes required. Configuration of reports is easy, extendable and scalable. Additionally, you can take benefit of powerful customization features to customize data collection formulae and calculations. All reports can be easily accessed via a web browser across devices. From that, you can easily check out the OEE report and take the necessary actions. Understand in Detail Cycle Time By tracking the time product takes to complete each cycle, we will get an average cycle time, which can be utilized to calculate machine performance. The shop floor management platform tracks the conditions related to each cycle, including the shift-wise timings, the time of day, the product created, etc. With this data, employees and management can recognize patterns for both the fastest as well as slowest cycle times, allowing them to recognize problems in production. The use of this information to reduce cycle times can significantly increase yield and OEE. Quality Control with Floor Mapping & Order Progress The capability to use shop floor management software to track and recognize the flow of material through the facility and in between lines is an important part of the successful production facility. Mapp platform collects data from equipment, and integrated systems while also empowering the user to track additional information. Our MAPP ZEN Quality 4.0 module helps quality assurance through its various modules such as PFMEA & DFMEA, PPAP, APQP, MSA and SPC. To recognize errors as early as possible, quality is guaranteed with spot checks, SPC as well as 100% tests. This module is one place to create and maintain the product quality control plan and recognize areas for improvement. The system alerts operators in real-time when specific errors occur. It also allows them to act before waste is produced and it is always online for remote monitoring. It also enables managers to inspect operations across the shop floor in real-time via an interactive dashboard. Plan, schedule, allocate, analyze, and track operator tasks and machineefficiency on the go. Implement Kneo’s Online SPC software module, along with the quality module, to: Get real-time SPC analysis to assure your process is stable. React quicker when process irregularities arise. Generate process inspection reports Forecast the amount of non-conforming product. Minimize material costs If each and every step throughout the production is mapped and analyzed then inefficient floor layouts can be easily recognized. Looking for more efficient routes for products to travel—or even rearranging the facility floor completely to give a better flow—can help save time and minimize average cycle times (performance), therefore improving OEE. Root Cause Analysis One of the most powerful ways to reduce deviations and positively impact your OEE is with digital Root Cause Analysis. Going down to the root of the issue makes sure you avoid repetition. Repeat concerns lead to waste—in the form of scrap, time as well as resources spent on resolving the problem, downtime and product rework. Removing waste always results in productivity benefits. When your engineers analyzed root causes remotely via a single database, there is no requirement to send your engineers or safety experts all over the world anymore, potentially unlocking remarkable cost savings in time. Smart Factory Visual KPI Displays MAPP IIOT Platform gives you a clearer picture of the whole factory floor with visual KPI displays. This approach can be applied at the shift, operator, or machine level to “check” what is going on that is impacting OEE. Operators can utilize this visualization to adjust and further improve their machine performance. This allows your team to become more proactive and respond to concerns in the right way. For example, various parameters can be seen such as current process status, production status, project target status, faults, etc. Our digital Shop floor Management solution will add more value to your existing system: Using customizable KPls, deviations in capacity utilization & damage can be identified early on, which can be quickly resolved. This not only improves the OEE but also gives all employees a clear overview of production through standardized processes. Production Tracking Along with tracking products generated, it is also essential to document

Energy Savings with Resource Monitoring for Manufacturing Industries

Energy Savings with Resource Monitoring for Manufacturing Industries What is Resource Monitoring Manufacturing industries are abuzz with activity throughout the day with multiple resources being used in various processes. From electricity and water to raw materials and personnel, all resources involved in the manufacturing process need to be monitored to get the best out of invested resources. There is a need for the industry to measure, analyze, and optimize the use of any designated resource. This activity is called Resource Monitoring. Technological advancements and push for Industry 4.0 have made this subject one of the major areas for application of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Here is it important to note that Resource Monitoring should not be confused with OEE (Overall Equipment Efficiency). Even though there may be a slight overlap between the two, the scope of resource monitoring is much wider. While OEE only measures the performance of the equipment, resource monitoring is also concerned with factors other than the machine itself, like proper use and maintenance. Considering that energy consumption is one of the major costs for the manufacturing industry, let’s focus on how IIoT and resource monitoring can impact this area. The Situation The industrial sector consumes 54% of all energy produced globally (EIA). The energy demand is ever-increasing and is touted to increase by 50% by 2050 (EIA). For industries to increase their profitability it is essential to optimize the use of energy. Energy monitoring is one of the simplest ways in which they can monitor and optimize resources. There is a need for tracking voltage, current, power factor, apparent power, active power, reactive power, and energy in KWpH for this purpose. The Challenge Today’s machinery is more powerful and efficient than systems of yesteryears. These advanced machines may seem to consume less power on face-value but are energy guzzlers when considering long hours of operation. The challenge is to invest time and effort in energy optimization while taking care of hectic production units. Besides, the data collected from multiple tools and equipment within the industry is difficult to consolidate in a single database. With many individuals involved in reporting, there is often a significant gap in measurement skills and reporting. This makes it nearly impossible for plant managers to identify and troubleshoot areas of high energy consumption or loss. The Solution Energy monitoring in theory is easy to initiate because it requires very little hardware and equipment to get started. By partitioning a factory’s circuits to isolate the desired assets, engineers can install energy meters to measure the energy consumption of defined processes. The data collection and reporting from these meters is done automatically with IIoT resource monitoring solutions. With this, the time-consuming and error-prone task of manual reporting is eliminated and real-time accurate data is available to the plant manager to optimize resources. The Impact Energy monitoring encourages incremental improvements at different stages for various processes. This, in turn, leads to significant energy and cost savings for the industry. Some applications of IIoT-based Energy Monitoring systems are listed below. Energy monitoring revealed that the use of compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) hurt the power factor for a manufacturing unit. CFLs were replaced by LEDs, reducing power consumption across the circuit. Multiple air conditioning units installed in the industrial setup did not operate with the same efficiency. Energy monitoring enabled engineers to identify poorly performing units for replacement or repair, making them more energy-efficient. Energy monitoring was used in conjunction with ambient condition monitoring. This enabled the engineers to identify an ambient temperature that prevented machines from consuming excess energy due to overheating. Clogged air filters were leading to the poor performance of some machines. When air sensors were linked to energy monitoring, the manufacturer was able to isolate the affected machines and replace filters before it degraded performance or caused damage to machines. Beyond Energy Monitoring Even though it is the most common application, resource monitoring is not just limited to energy monitoring. Resource monitoring can be leveraged for processes across the organization. Some examples are given below. Tracking and optimizing the use of water as coolant to lower costs and ensure compliance with local regulations. Monitoring the quantities of chemicals or raw materials used in a pharmaceutical manufacturing process to reduce material wastage. Measuring the throughput of wax through an injection molding process to increase productivity. Tracking the availability, scheduling, and resource consumption of individual assets for timely production and deliveries. Increased understanding of the causes of machine downtime to improve asset utilization. KNEO Automation’s Industry 4.0 solutions enable resource monitoring, including energy monitoring, resulting in cost savings for your enterprise.