Case Study Archives - Page 2 of 2 - MES Solution - FreePoint Machine Monitoring System

5 Reasons Your Operator’s Performance is Slipping & How To Fix it

September 15, 2017/in Articles, Case Study, Manufacturing

If you have a manufacturing business, you have to put in extra efforts to increase the performance and productivity of your workers and machines.

You need to look for ways to gauge and monitor the performance of your team. In addition to motivating them to work more productively, you also have to find out the reasons they are not giving their maximum performance. Here are the 5 signs/reasons your machine operators are not giving their best.

1. They Aren’t Properly Trained

When you hire workers, you have to ensure they know how to operate the machinery they will be working behind. If they don’t have the knowledge, you will have to provide them the training for operating a particular piece of equipment. If you see that your operator is taking too much time doing simple things, this is a clear sign he/she is not fully trained to operate the machine.

2. Your Machine Software Is Not Advanced

When you see that your operators are giving their best, but your productivity is still low, this could be a sign that the technology and software on the machine is outdated. For example, it might be missing the profile feature where it creates profiles to load certain settings with the tap of a button. Invest in better machinery.

3. Your Machines Aren’t Properly Maintained

If you have just installed advanced software on your machines, but the productivity hasn’t seen any boost, it could mean that your machine isn’t adequately maintained. Machines that are used frequently need to be thoroughly maintained, they need to have a change in parts and components. An inadequately lubricated machine can also have performance issues.

4. Your Operator Is Just Not Paying Attention

Sometimes, it is just the operator who is not interested in working. Maybe the operator is not happy with his work or he may be going through a difficult time in his life, it could be something personal. Repeated and prolonged downtimes are signs that your operator is deliberately delaying everything to find excuses for not working. Have a heart to heart with your employees.

5. You Don’t Have Any Accountability Mechanism

Do you have some software or tool to know the cause of unnecessarily long downtimes and low performance? When there is no accountability or a mechanism to hold people accountable, you can expect performances to be low naturally.

The point is, there could be a plethora of factors hampering your productivity. Your job is to find out what the problem is and fix it without delay. That’s where our Machine Monitoring Software comes into the picture. With this software installed on your machines, you will be able to collect detailed performance data of your machines. This data will be revealing enough to tell you who or what is causing any sort of downtime. You will get detailed reports on your machine’s runtime, downtime and part count.

In addition to giving you a detailed insight of your floor’s performance, it also helps your employees stay productive and efficient. With this software, they are able to monitor the performance of their machines in real-time and fix the issues that come up. Once there is proper check, monitoring, and accountability, you will see your manufacturing business flourish.

When you combine FreePoint Technologies machine monitoring hardware with our visualization software, you can exponentially increase both productivity and employee engagement.

Top 3 Benefits of Machine Monitoring

April 24, 2017/in Articles, Case Study, Machine Monitoring, Technology

In our previous blog post, “How Machine Monitoring Works”, we explored the 6 steps involved in connecting your machines, storing and displaying information, and using the data to increase productivity.

Today, we are going to continue with this theme and look at the top 3 benefits of machine monitoring.

Benefit #1 – Reduce Downtime

Every manufacturing plant wants to run their operations as lean and efficiently as possible and one of the biggest obstacles that stands in the way is downtime. Downtime consumes valuable resources that could have been used for productivity. When a FreePoint’s monitoring system is integrated with your machines, managers and supervisors are notified as soon as the machine goes down. They can than investigate the issue, find out what the problem is and prevent it from happening again.

When speaking with Vic Kinesella, plant supervisor of AutoTube, he mentioned that before their company implemented FreePoint, they had no idea how long machines were down for. Now that they have machine monitoring implemented, Vic can respond quicker to the issue and find the root of the problem. This has saved Vic’s company thousands of dollars in reduced down time.

Benefit #2 – Empower employees

At FreePoint, we believe in the importance of empowering and engaging employees with modern technology. Manufacturing processes need to be re-humanized and provide an environment for workers to play a bigger role in identifying productivity improvements using factual, real-time process information. Machine monitoring enables that. When our customers share their machine data with their employees, the machinists start to feel engaged and a have sense of accountability. When management invests in a machine monitoring system, it demonstrates to their employees that they are committed to increasing productivity and continuous improvement.

Benefit #3 – Make informed decisions

With the data you receive from your machines, it will help to make more informed decisions on a daily basis. Here are just a few items where the information will be used:

More accurate quoting for jobs
Better decision making on purchasing more machines
More informed decision making on hiring employees
Useful information that can be used for training employees

At FreePoint, we are dedicated to helping manufacturing companies improve their bottom line, engage their employees and bring modern technology to the plant floor. Through the power of the internet and our patent-pending technology, we are able to connect to any machine, giving you the tools you need to keep your manufacturing facility going strong. Reach out today to start experiencing the benefits of machine monitoring!

Leveling the Playing Field for the Millennial Generation

April 20, 2017/in Articles, Case Study, Manufacturing

No one likes an unfair game or an unfair system. With access to new technology such as the internet and social platforms, the new generation is keenly aware of and particularly sensitive to the injustices of the past and the present. The challenge with traditional employee measurement and incentive programs on the plant floor is that there is no common denominator. No way to truly compare the drill press operation to the CNC machine to the cutting of steel. FreePoint Technologies patent pending Shiftworx platform is the world’s first true application that completely flattens the factory floor and levels the playing field for everyone – even millennials. By effectively adopting the core concepts of lean manufacturing and applying technology solutions, FreePoint measures actual value added work vs waste in the exact same way in every process.

While powerful, but becoming increasingly common in machine monitoring, this new cloud connecting technology platform enables the development of deep gamification and engagement tools for any process, cell, plant or group of plants that wish to be at the forefront of attracting and retaining the future workforce. There are no barriers due to language or location. All people and all process are measured in the same common sense and fair manner. Easy to understand and universal in its application, FreePoint equips manufacturers today with the tools and technologies to leverage their existing assets into millennial ready and smart manufacturing powerhouses of tomorrow.

For more information on how FreePoint can help level the playing field for your employees, millennial or not, please contact engage@getfreepoint.com.

FreePoint Helps Client Increase Productivity by 25%

February 4, 2017/in Case Study

The following case study demonstrates how FreePoint’s technologies were successfully used by a manufacturer to help increase their productivity by 25% in one year.

The customer is an Ontario-based machine tool shop. All of the company’s orders are for custom, single unit production. The following figures and study focus on their 6 most critical machines.

Mills: Oct – Dec 2015 vs Oct – Dec 2016 Baseline

To establish a baseline for comparison, the chart below shows the operating time for the mills for the period of October 1 to December 23 for 2015 and 2016 on a 24 hour X 5 basis.

In 2015, the average spindle time was 30.78% and for the same period in 2016, the average was 38.58%. This equates to an increase of 562 minutes, or 9.4 hours of additional utilization per week, per machine, or 1.2 extra shifts per week per machine. This represents a 25% increase over the same period last year.

Calculated net benefit:

The net improvement achieved in the operation of the mills in 2016 would be 141% of the cost of one full time operator for one shift. Assuming one full time operator costs the company $100K (all in cost), the net cost benefit would be $141K. Or looked at another way, if one hour of machine time generates $80 in revenue, the added revenue created equals 9.4hrs X 6 machines X 52 weeks X $80 = $234,624.

“Value Added Time” vs Spindle Time

The charts in this report are all based on the actual spindle running under load minutes. The FreePoint system uses a proprietary algorithm to determine “value adding time” because the spindle is often not on the entire time that the part is being machined. The value adding calculation is reflective of the period of time the machine is productively busy. For the critical machines in this particular year-over-year report, the algorithm calculated that the “value added” time is typically 1.8 X the actual spindle running under load time. The net financial benefits shown above could arguably be adjusted by this factor (making the net positive effect over $420,000).

Mills: 2016 year overall

The charts below show the mills for the entire year. The chart on the left shows the seasonal trends for the year. January and February are slow, March to June are strong, July and August are flat again, and then September to December are strong again.

The chart on the left shows all the machines week by week while the chart on the right shows each machine for the year.

On a 24 X 5 basis (24 hours per day, 5 days per week), the total average utilization time for all the mills in 2016 was 33.5%.

Mills 2016: Quarter by Quarter

On a quarter by quarter basis, you can clearly see the seasonal ebbs and flows: January and February are slow, March to June are strong, July and August are flat again, and then September to December are strong again.

Spindle time vs revenue generation time

The “spindle” time captured represents the time the spindle is working on the part and creating revenue. Setup and teardown are also other activities that are often factored into the cost of the job and are therefore could be considered as “revenue creating”. FreePoint’s ShiftWorx platform is capable of capturing set up times and tear down times, but this information is often already available from many company’s ERP systems.

Down Time Code and Notifications Modules now available:

Downtime codes can now also be collected by the ShiftWorx system. This function was not used by this customer in 2016, but it is available, along with email and text alarm and alert notifications.

For more information on how FreePoint can help you increase productivity, please contact info@getfreepoint.com. Remember, you can’t improve what you don’t measure!

FreePoint Helps A Customer Increase Their Productivity By 42%

January 19, 2017/in Articles, Case Study, Machine Monitoring, Manufacturing, News, Technology

The following case study demonstrates how FreePoint’s technologies were successfully used by their customer to help increase the productivity of a critical machine by 42%.

The customer is a leading international manufacturer and distributor of high quality die sets, components, steel plates, and metal fabrications used in the production of tools, dies, and molds. The following figures demonstrate the impact of FreePoint Technologies’ system.

During FreePoint’s ShiftWorx training in November 2015 with the client, ShiftWorx tools were used to assess the impact of the company’s recent continuous improvement project with a critical vertical machining centre. In September 2015 the customer implemented a change in their process, and FreePoint decided to use that situation as a training example.

The first chart below shows the active machining time for the machine from October 1, 2015, to June 30, 2016. FreePoint used this period to establish a “baseline” from which to compare the future improvements against. The period was selected for the following reasons:

The machine was operated by the same operator for the same shift in a steady fashion for a long period of time
The period did not include the traditional vacation period (July and August)
Workload varied from week to week and month to month, but a 9 month period leveled out the peaks and valleys.
“Zero days” show up on the chart but are excluded from the average calculation.
The percentage are based on a 24 hour (or 1440 minute) “day”. They can easily be converted to a shift by multiplying the percentage by 1440 (total for a 24 hour day) and then dividing by the minutes in that shift. (For instance, 11.72% of a 480-minute shift would be 35%)

The chart below shows that on average, the machine operated 11.72% of a 24 hour day, or 169 minutes of “value adding” time on a single 8-hour shift, which equates to 34.2%.

For comparison purposes, the following chart shows the summer months – June 2015 and July 2015. There are 3 weeks of inactivity, likely due to holidays or lack of work for the machine. The daily average is down a bit, to 10% of a 24 hour period, or 144 minutes or 30% for the 8-hour shift.

The month of September shows a slight increase over the pre-summer numbers, at 12.75% of a 24 hour period, or 183 minutes of value adding time per day or 38% for the 8-hour shift.

The month of October comes in at 13.46% of 24 hours, or 194 minutes or 40.4% of an 8-hour shift.

And finally, November 2016 (up to November 25th) comes in at 16.76%, or 241 minutes of value adding activity, equal to 50.2% of the 8-hour shift.

This represents a 42.6% increase in value adding machining time when compared to the baseline established for the 9 month period from October 2015 through June 2016.

We had the opportunity to ask the customer some clarifying questions to gain an insight into the effect FreePoint Technologies had on their business.

Q: What problem were you trying to solve?

A: The problem we were trying to solve was to reduce setup times on the machine and to increase the time the machine was working.

Q: What change or changes made the biggest impact?

A: The two biggest changes were that we added setup vises for clamping material, and made changes to our programming. Parts are put in vice and clamped square, reducing setup time on the first side. We also made changes to the program so that the face head was in contact with the material making chips more often. We did this by reducing air passes and reducing program editing by the operator.

Q: How long did it take to implement the change?

A: It took about 2 weeks to implement the changes and we saw results immediately.

For more information on how FreePoint can help your continuous improvement efforts, please contact engage@getfreepoint.com. Remember, you can’t improve what you don’t measure!