If you had all the data from the manufacturing shopfloor operations at your disposal; up-to-date and historic, on material properties, supplier batches, on asset performance, quality, process settings and actuals and who was working at the line, what questions would you ask? Which insights result in improved shopfloor performance and added value? [...]
Challenging Times What can we learn from others November 17-18, 2021 – MESA South Africa held its successful Year End Summit "The Art of the Possible: Manufacturing Without Limits". In his key note, MOMi president and senior consultant Jan Snoeij shared some observations for manufacturers in these challenging times. Summarizing [...]
When talking about Smart Manufacturing and Industry 4.0, alignment of Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) immediately comes to mind as an enabler. Convergence of IT and OT is often challenging. Not just because of new and exciting technologies but also because of new ways of thinking and even new business models. This tends [...]
Bringing more automation to the shop floor eventually makes the shop floor more dependent on IT. IT systems provide the data to start production, or during production data is to be collected and recorded. An IT system downtime event or an interface that misbehaves brings questions such as; “How much system downtime do we accept [...]
To respond adequately to the ever faster changing demand of their customers, manufacturers need to have clear visibility and transparency of what happens on their shop floor. The fourth industrial revolution has shown the importance of accessing the right data for intelligent decision support. Similarly, a successful implementation of a Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) solution [...]
Connected shop floor systems bring new options to streamline and integrate production, from product-design to prototype and from production planning to result. MES systems for example may be configured to load the correct machine CNC program, setting or digital instruction automatically when an operator changes over to a new production order. If [...]
Yes, shopfloor procedures have been documented. But are they followed? Always? When interviewing operators to design new IT systems for the shopfloor, you will find undocumented exceptions in work-processes like: “In that case I just run the material one more time through the operation” “If this happens we override the system with [...]
The fourth industrial revolution has shown the importance of accessing the right data for continuous improvement of our manufacturing performance. However, here there is more to it than just technology. IT is not a goal in itself. When selecting any new software application, it is critical to remember why the project was originally conceived to [...]
Drive innovation, eliminate data silos, and improve operational resilience Driving product and service innovation is increasingly dependent upon an operations infrastructure that is not hindered by systems or equipment interoperability. Establishing and maintaining a digital ecosystem can overcome this challenge and is a critical part of becoming a digital enterprise. Join us for an educational [...]
Improve agility and resilience by managing quality as an integrated processAs manufacturers of highly engineered products look to ramp up production in a post-pandemic world, the need for resilient, flexible operations while maintaining high quality standards is still vital. This requirement dictates quality be managed as a seamless, integrated part of the production process. Quality must [...]
