Manufacturers constantly face the challenge of improving time-to-market while decreasing production costs and enhancing quality. It can be challenging to decipher which data signals matter the most with the massive amount of data generated by the production plant daily. To create performance plans for their machinery, manufacturers rely on real-time monitoring for the baseline data they need. With digital technologies, it has become easy for manufacturers to turn routine machines into granular data and all that at your fingertips. Machine Monitoring has made it possible to capture and display machine data in real-time for more targeted improvements and better visibility.
How to Monitor Machine Performance?
Consistent Throughput:
The manufacturing process usually relies on the smooth running of machines, people, and tasks to maintain a consistent throughput. It covers the entire time frame from when raw materials first enter manufacturing to when finished goods exit.
Tracking Line Production Output:
If you track your manufacturing line production output over time and find that it varies, start by examining your machine performance. It involves:
○ Looking for history of machine downtime ○ Looking at the speed of resolution of machine downtime problems
Access to Consistent & Updated Status:
It is vital to arm yourself with information to make decisions. Sometimes you need to access the information that is relevant but does not have proper tracking. This is where manufacturing software helps in tracking adequate and appropriate information.
Using Machine Monitoring tools:
While machine data is necessary, good data should be a baseline, not an end in itself. To track the complete machine performance, you need to access some of the machine manufacturing tools.
TrackiTT can help you in accessing these tools efficiently. Our fully automated machine monitoring & software render visualizations of real-time manufacturing production data, allowing factory workers to make faster, instant notifications, as well as historical paralytics, and more confident decisions based on real-time data.
How to Get Started Without Breaking the Bank
- Upgrading existing systems
- Switching costs to an entirely new platform
- Getting a custom software development built for your manufacturing unit.
- Using cloud apps that solve the specific pain point without overhauling your current system
While most of the manufacturers follow any of the above four options to get started, it is vital to understand that upgrading new systems and switching to a new platform can be highly expensive, and getting custom software built for each unit can be a challenging part when it comes to maintaining, scaling and growing.
The best alternative is to switch to cloud apps and enhance your machine’s performance. To improve machine performance without breaking the banks, you need to follow these four steps.
Step 1: Identify the critical machines that are the bottlenecks on your most essential production lines/processes. Step 2: Implement a system to measure performance that helps you collect data and analyze trends. Step 3: Create dashboards and empower your team to monitor, take action. It will help you in enhancing your machine’s performance. Step 4: Make incremental improvements and observe the overall trend/impact.
What to teach employees?
You need to teach your employees about the new equipment and technology to get the most value out of them. Employee training is an excellent way to improve your performance at the manufacturing unit. Don’t limit training and education to equipment and technology. Inculcate these excellent tips into your teaching process and see the manufacturing performance upgrading like never before.
1. Standardize the Machine Downtime Logging and Analysis
A significant part of manufacturing is understanding when the machines are correctly functional and when not. There are many instances when it’s being reported that machines are up when they’re not or performing better than they are. This is because of shortstops or downtime that fails to be reported due to manual processes or improper recordings. Teach your employees to record 24 hours from your latest downtime logs or downtime report. This will focus your analysis on a manageable period and equip you with enough data to gain insights and prepare for the next day’s starting shift. Ask them to look hour by hour to understand when and how extended downtime occurred. This will provide you with knowledge of what might have caused or increased downtime. Was it just caused by the confusion of a shift change or an unscheduled operator break?
Daily Analysis of Top Problems on Production Line
To maximize productivity, every manufacturing unit needs a sound production plan. However, teaching your employees about the daily analysis of top problems on the production line can help. It covers various activities to ensure that materials, equipment, and human resources are available when and where they are needed. It helps you know where you are going and how long it will take you to get there. *It eliminates wasted time and improves process flow. *Improved on-time deliveries of products and services.
Run Kaizens PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act)
With Kaizen, manufacturing units can constantly identify, observe, and implement incremental manufacturing processes. Kaizen assures that waste will be reduced continuously through the common talents and knowledge of every employee of the company will reduce the minor inefficiencies daily.
How to Run a Kaizen Event
Day 1: Start with the training on necessary lean principles. Your team should identify areas of waste in a process and gather all the data. Day 2: Bring in new ideas to improve the process. It can involve action item assignments, plan development, constructing spaghetti charts, filling out time observation forms, and measuring travel distances. Day 3: Time to act on the planned brainstorming activities and finally prepare an improvement plan to implement by the end of the day. Day 4: Refine the process, and work out the bugs. By the end of the day, the team needs to discuss how to sustain the improved process. Day 5: The last day should involve a presentation to management and the celebration of the work that has been completed.
Standardize the Solution. How?
Standardization in manufacturing is an important thing and worth the effort. Standardizing the way your manufacturing unit operates leads to improved profitability and cuts down on all sorts of problems.
Benefits of Standardization:
The benefits of standardization are many. These are the top of the charts for any manufacturing unit:
Deployment:A standardized system is more agile to deploy. When everything is standardized (naming conventions, software, etc.), your deployment becomes (sort of) lather, rinse, repeat.
1) Clear Visibility: With a standardized system, get visibility across various sites to compare different processes with complete transparency. With standardization across your manufacturing unit, you can see across that enterprise. And that’s priceless.
2) Maintenance to Dream About: A standardized system is much easier to maintain. When your system is standardized, you modify it once and apply it to other processes, data collections, etc.
3) Cloud Power: A standardized system in the cloud is cost-effective. There is no maintenance, no servers. All you need is a single, unified data repository (which alone acts as a work of standardization); the best part is that your employees can easily access all types of devices.
4) Standard Operating Procedures: Built Standard Operating Procedures that operators and employees can refer to and follow. This makes the complete process less complicated and accessible for everyone.
5) Providing Technical Work Instructions: With standardization, you can provide technical work instructions for maintenance teams (if required).
6) Standard Sign Offs: Prepare maintenance sign offs and standard documents to ensure that the process can be audited efficiently and without any inaccuracy.
Standardization usually covers: ● How to do every step/task on that machine ● Providing clear instructions on what to do when there is an error/problem/quality issue ● Standard solutions/things to try for known errors/quality issues
Conclusion
In this modern manufacturing environment, it has become vital to use a machine monitoring system that produces correct real-time visibility. With manufacturing software, companies can improve their manufacturing performance.
Companies that are already practicing lean manufacturing techniques are switching to lean monitoring systems. This helps them reinforce the habit of constantly pruning back on activities that don’t add value to the customer.
Installing a production machine monitoring system is the ‘first step’ for tracking continuous improvement. It enables manufacturers to track activities and automatically record the performance of their machine tools.
Source : Machine Performance Affects Your Manufacturing Performance
