Situation
Network Administrator for Engineering Systems and Director of Total Quality Management for a manufacturer of work-enabling devices for the transportation industry based on efficient electro-mechanical actuation technologies.
Critical issue
The company was unable to marry real-time data from process control equipment with quality and performance data. This lack of data made decision making and continuous process improvement difficult.
Reason
Manual data collection systems were too time consuming and error prone, while commercial automated systems were too expensive, too difficult to set up, or too inflexible to use. Home grown systems took too long to develop.
Vision
The company wanted a real-time system that merged real-time data from process control equipment with real-time SPC metrics data to form a truly integrated SPC system for the shop floor. The new system had to be practical (easy) to deploy.
Hertzler Systems provided
Hertzler Systems added new features to GainSeeker Suite to support the OPC standard for communication of real-time data between control devices and enterprise software systems in manufacturing. Then with a few hours of custom configuration, the company deployed the system on the shop floor.
Results
According to the Network Administrator: “If we had written this interface ourselves, it would have taken us 3-4 man months of intense programming, and in the end we would have had a system that solved one problem. With the GainSeeker solution we got it running in a few hours, and we have the ability to modify it quickly and easily.”
Using GainSeeker, the company was able to collect and analyze downtime information in new ways, and was able to boost OEE from 65% to 75%. This represented over $130K increase in throughput. This has enabled them to keep with up with increased product demand without increasing production capacity (no capital investment) or staffing.
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