Breaking down data silos

One of the biggest issues preventing the productive use of the data that exists in manufacturing plants is due to the data silos. These silos often aren’t intentional. They could just be a biproduct of an era when no one thought about collecting data at an industrial scale. Your line had a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) that could collect some basic diagnostics and that was enough. The operator could check in to make sure everything was operational, so no need to view the factory as a whole.

Or perhaps your manufacturing engineering team was just in a rush to get the production lines up and running in order to get that new product out the door and fill orders.  They planned on going back and tying all their IoT devices to a dashboard and automate weekly reports.  They just haven’t had time to get back to it between lines being down and trying to gear up for the next new product launch.

Whatever the reason, these silos exist. And being able to get at the data inside them can provide critical insight to the operational effectiveness of your plant.  It can highlight problem machinery, alert you to quality issues and let you know if your overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is not meeting targets.

Eliminating Paper

In our experience, paper processes are far too prevalent in the world of manufacturing.  Using paper to track orders as they navigate through production is costing you money and putting you at risk.  The costs associated with a paper process aren’t limited to the cost of the paper.  You need to then have a way to file and store that paper, which costs money.  Then there is the cost associated with taking the order information and paying someone to manually enter it into a machine on the line, all the while hoping that what was written was legible and the person keying it in doesn’t make a mistake.  If that paper needs to get from one spot on the production floor to another, then you are paying someone to walk it around.

If the costs aren’t enough of a deterrent, then consider the risks you are introducing by having a paper process.  There is the risk to your reputation by having a process that is open for human error to take place.  For example, errors in recording critical data, such as, serial numbers, in spec and out of spec measurements or even detail work instructions can cause significant ramifications downstream and impact to the customer. And what happens when you get audited for food or drug safety and your records are missing or incomplete because the printouts are lost?

In today’s digital world, we can do much better. Ideally information can remain digital from initial order to the production floor to the customer’s doorstep.  The process can be streamlined to ensure that digitization of information is performed once. From there we can take the data and pass it through production and then file it away so it can be easily retrieved if needed for an audit.  This process of taking your plant floor fully digital enables greater efficiencies, increased production volumes and improved product quality.

Avoiding confusion

Have you ever had a line get set up for a run, or worse, start production, only to realize that you were missing a critical component or raw material?  Your supplier was delayed, or the incoming quality team rejected the latest shipment from a supplier, but no one informed the production team.  Now you need to tear down the line and prepare to run another product.  All the Work-in-Progress (WIP) must be scrapped.  The operators on the line are confused and frustrated.  All this resulting in lost time and materials, ultimately hurting the bottom line.

This is truly unfortunate considering that it is completely avoidable.  Your logistics software or warehouse management system (WMS) has all the data needed to inform your production lines about material shortages or delays.  This information can be fed to production so that intelligent decisions can be made on what products to run.  If a line changeover takes a significant amount of time, that changeover can be strategically planned to minimize downtime and increase OEE.  You can have tracking of raw materials as it enters your facility, through manufacturing until it ships out as finished goods.

Improving track and trace

The ability to track throughout the entire production process provides several important advantages in the world of manufacturing.  Have you ever had a quality issue in the field and wanted to trace it back to the batch or line to figure out if you have a widespread issue?  Or have you discovered after the fact that a supplier provided material that was out of spec?  Issues like these require tracking throughout the entire journey that material follows through your plant―from gate-to-gate.

The solution that solves

The Objective MES and WMS system helps solve these five data issues in one solution. The solution provides the digital integration of your systems; from ERP, to production machinery and SCADA/PLC systems. This integration ensures the optimal flow of goods and materials from raw material coming into your plant, to finished goods going out the door.  Our gate-to-gate solution positions our clients to achieve their goal for mastering manufacturing and system transparency, improving operational efficiencies, realizing meaningful data and increasing corporate profitability.