In this post, we will look at the typical manufacturing process and then compare it to a process that uses Acumence.
A Typical Manufacturing Plant
A typical manufacturer might have dozens of plants worldwide. In most cases, a variety of custom, control-level systems are used to capture and report on results in the plant. In some cases, the data might be reported to a central database or legacy system within the plant.
As a result, operators and supervisors may have a limited understanding of their production totals during each shift, how much time the equipment is down, and how much scrap or spoilage is produced. However, the information is typically limited, and this solution is a fragile combination of connected systems with limited formal support. The cost to maintain the system grows each year, and the functionality cannot keep up with the latest technological advances and operating systems.
Furthermore, the information provided, while useful, is incomplete and without context. Most downtime occurs as a result of many short duration events. For example, at one plant, the average downtime event was less than a minute in duration, so the information was not captured with the legacy system. Therefore, there were no links between the legacy system and other business systems such as their ERP and quality systems. This created gaps in performance reporting.
A Plant Using Acumence
In contrast, a manufacturer using Acumence implements the same software solution throughout the entire enterprise, streamlining the data. Acumence provides access to real-time data as well as historical reports in a consistent manner for every plant in the enterprise.
All real-time data and historical reports can be accessed through Acumence where all the information is complete, contextualized by the plant model, and contains no gaps.
In summation, a manufacturer using Acumence has plant-wide benefits including:
- Standard measures of performance
- Improved efficiency
- Faster response to downtime
- Reduction in spoilage or scrap
