Linkedin kpi's + mii = manufacturing intelligence

Editor's Notes

1. The founders of our company had the foresight to believe PC’s were not only going to make there way to the factory floor, but were going to have a significant impact on the way manufacturing was done. The emergence of Windows helped accelerate that, and as networks grew on the office side of things, they also grew on the factory side as well – hence the name Industrial Network Systems, or INS.
2. Within that information layer, we specialize in four solution sets. KPI Dashboards & Scoreboards – What are you measuring? OEE & Production Metrics Quality Metrics Utility Monitoring Data Analytics & Intelligent Historian – How do you collect? Where do you store it? How do you use it? Data collection – disparate systems Troubleshooting anomalies Root cause analysis Mobile Data Access –Empowering a mobile workforce to act on and provide data input in real time. Auditors Reducing paper – use/storage/disposal Any handheld mobile device - e.g. ipads, iPhones, etc. Execution and Workflow – Driving standard work practices and executing a work process. MES Workflow Track & Trace Compliance Genealogy
3. We are doing business with a Who’s Who of companies…small-to-large…global corporations and small regional manufacturers…in industries that include Food & Beverage, Consumer Packaged Goods, Pharmaceutical, Medical Devices, Farm and Construction Equipment, Building Materials, Automotive, and Aerospace. Everything from Grains to Planes.
4. We are an information solutions company – in a typical manufacturing organization you have the controls layer on the factory floor…controlling equipment as it was programmed to do and likely communicating to other pieces of equipment on the shop floor. On the opposite end you have your business systems layer…including your financial controlling, purchasing, order system, etc...the layer that helps a company manage the business operations. Our expertise is in that middle information layer between manufacturing and the business systems…specifically our knowledge of the manufacturing process and those systems, our knowledge of business ERP systems like SAP, etc., and our ability to connect manufacturing and business data to provide actionable information to many levels of an enterprise. “We get the right information, to the right people, at the right time, to make impactful business decisions…changing the culture of manufacturing”
5. These solutions provide you the ability to compare plant-to-plant efficiencies, or asset-to-asset performance, across the organization. We can also think about this in terms of balancing your checkbook – at the end of every month you receive a statement with check number and amounts or debits and credits listed for your account…this is data. Now maybe you do your banking online, or you receive a statement from your credit card company that provides you a summary of expenses in various categories…medical…grocery…restaurant & entertainment…utilities…etc. This is now information. Now after reviewing this, you decide to set a budget for yourself and establish a goal to reduce your restaurant and entertainment expenses…specifically how often you eat out – this is a business driver. Now, in order to meet your goal, you are alerted every time you are approaching your limit…or you have a giant display in your home that shows you in real time, how you are doing based upon the targets you have set…this is what we do for businesses in the context of their manufacturing operations.
6. This was a solution for a cheese processor. They take blocks of cheese and slice it, shred it, and sometimes blend it, then package it. They are a higher end brand, so world-class quality is very important – it is their market differentiator, yet they still need to optimize their processing capabilities Their business drivers - Number 1 business objective was to increase productivity Continue to produce at world-class quality, while increasing throughput Wanted to condition their employees to look up at the boards, so they included trivia competitions to drive that culture change. Automatically captured downtime, root-cause analysis and OEE – which updates every 5 minutes Delivered this information via a large 55 inch flat screen Changeover awareness is crucial – helped them reduce time during product change Created pit crew concept for quick changeovers.
7. You may want to ask – Are they collecting the data? And if so – do they have mining capabilities…predictive or modeling tools…ability to troubleshoot when issue arises This would be similar to a black box flight recorder to monitor your critical process information Everyone uses Google to search the web…or some sort of search engine We can think about this in terms of buying milk for the household, which everyone has that person(s) that creates the list for the grocery shopping. Based on previous experience, you know milk only last so long in the refrigerator…you know how long it takes for you to consume that milk…if you have kids that increases that consumption a little more and maybe also complicates the rate at which it is consumed…but you buy what you but…right. So now imagine you still have that responsibility, but now you have no visibility whatsoever into how, or at what rate the milk is being consumed. You have some basic experience and know when and what on average to buy, but you have no knowledge about that specific week and yet you must make an accurate purchase to keep the household supplied with milk, but not too much milk…pretty difficult to do. Now you don’t know it but, some friends stopped over the other evening and had a cup of hot chocolate, and your child’s friends came over and each had a bowl of cereal earlier that day…changing your average consumption rate that week without your knowledge. That is essentially what the business side is faced with when they have no visibility into the manufacturing side. Capturing that data, making it relevant to the person…in our example the person buying the milk…getting it to them in real-time so they can take action to assure the right amount of milk, and not too much milk (critical process information) is there when needed…that is what we do for businesses…helping them to capture, transform, deliver and act information about manufacturing events.
8. This example happens to be the largest producer in the world. They have 3000 gallon tanks that are about 8 feet in diameter and about 17 feet tall…like a mini water tower. They have 650 of these in there largest facility. The crush (the juice produced after crushing the grapes) go into these tanks. Tanks may have different types of grape crush and are blended with others (for particular types of wines) and moved to other crush tanks. This can become somewhat of a complex process and with the volume of production, potentially risky and costly. Grapes are a commodity in California…when demand is high the cost of those grapes is high. As winemakers reach capacity of their crush, they stop buying grapes. This winemaker originally had no visibility into how full those tanks were. We provided them that visibility so they could optimize the fill of their crush tanks…flushing them at a more rapid rate. That allowed this winemaker to continue to purchase grapes, after the demand dropped and the price had dropped as well. Allowing them to maximize that fill in the crush tanks, allowed them to continue to buy after the price had dropped, and therefore allowed them to increase their margin. Each manager now uses their dashboard each morning to establish which area to focus on…managing by exception. That was a culture change in management – every manager now contributes to continuously improving the process. For the last 2 years, they have had the largest crush yield in their history Once that process was optimized, they could then move to improve visibility into the next bottleneck…the centrifuge process (separation of juice from pieces). Being able to quickly react to a commodity market and take advantage of it (price in this case) – can also work for energy, grain…other commodities.
9. Every manufacturing company has tasks or checklists they have to complete on some frequency…maybe its monthly…or it may be at changeover, or in compliance with a government agency (e.g. OSHA), or perhaps you have meters that do not have digital capabilities, so these tasks just can not be automated. Having the ability to capture that data electronically and uploading it, versus capturing it via a clipboard, transferring that data then to a spreadsheet, and then disseminating that spreadsheet to all relevant stakeholders, can greatly reduce inefficiencies and errors and improve time-to-reporting. Likewise, having the ability to visualize that reporting or scoreboard on your mobile device, regardless of where you are at, can greatly improve time-to-decision making. Mobile data collection = Auditmatic, MII Mobile data view/analysis = Transpara, MII, Proficy
10. In the food & beverage industry, those checks can be for the USDA, or FDA and the mobile nature of quality auditors that go from plant location to plant location, require the ability to capture and disseminate critical information identified from an audit, as well as the ability to access report information, while they are in a plant, on the road. This food processor deployed a mobile version of their scoreboard to provide their mobile employees with visibility into the status of critical plant information, particularly of their plant control system, allowing for real-time production status.
11. Many order executions today are happening by printing off an order on paper or via Excel. Then once you have the order…what is execution of it and is workflow required Track & Trace - What were the sub-batches …what raw materials, where from, what lines, what processes, times, temps…maybe certificates of compliance. Genealogy – complete record of events (like the above) across the life cycle of a product…who/what lots/what date & time did the raw materials come from, etc. Solutions not only automatically execute an order generated from an ERP system (like SAP), but can also send a quality record back up to the QM module, and a cost record back up to the financial module. History is also maintained outside of the ERP for historical tracking to “birth certificate” – raw material through packaged product.
12. At a brewery, water and grain are first combined (called wort) and then boiled. Hops are added for flavoring…it is boiled again and eventually transferred to containers with yeast added for the first fermentation. After the initial fermentation, the beer is transferred to bright beer tanks where it matures, clarifies and, is naturally carbonated through secondary fermentation. It is important what happens in this tank – temperature, age, alcohol content and clarity all must be monitored, the data captured for future reference, and repeated from batch-to-batch to assure consistency across the brand. Having the ability to send orders to the plant from their SAP ERP system and sending back a notice to SAP when the order is complete, optimizes the time-to-market efficiencies.
13. I’m sure some of the customer examples I provided you sound familiar. We would be very interested in further exploring opportunities with your company, to help you address
14. Ask what they believe Next Steps should be. Then if appropriate, recommend Next Steps in slide. Wait – Do Not Continue Unless the Customer has No Recommendations for Next Steps. Could be a more detailed presentation on any one of the Solution Sets, or a specific solution of interest – to a broader group or to another department in the company (Ask for inter-company referrals if contact not interested). To what extent would your quality department be interested in better monitoring of product/process quality?