Real challenges in production & manufacturing
Rule of thumb: a 'good' overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) for a (German) manufacturing company is about 60% on average. Putting it simply, out of 100 products that could be produced under theoretically optimal conditions, in actual real-world operation just 60 are produced. Around 85% is regarded as an excellent OEE (average value from a study ). With our solution, we start off in 'light-weight' mode i.e. without major entry hurdles, because just optimising the flow of machine alarms can quickly represent a high economic value for companies without requiring large investments. Please ask us about reference examples.
To increase machine availability, we must first look at the causes of low equipment effectiveness.
They are often due to machine-related failures and faulty processes.
Few companies have effective information and warning mechanisms that signal plant malfunctions or necessary maintenance work in real time. Differing country standards and growing requirements in the area of obligatory documentation lead to increased efforts in quality assurance and thus to slower reaction times.
On the other hand, smooth production processes are often based on the know-how and many years of experience of a few experts in the production environment. In the whole global arena, however, there is often a shortage of qualified service personnel in the areas of machine attendance and operation. A pool of widely differing machines and increasingly stringent requirements in these areas, together with the lack of a holistic view in the event of simultaneously occurring process anomalies, make the situation even more difficult. Documented rules and procedures with corresponding prioritisations are often not immediately available when a machine failure occurs.
This results in high skills requirements with respect to fault prioritisation and correction, to maintenance and to operation. Incorrect decisions in prioritising the troubleshooting lead, in turn, to lost efficiency, extended downtime, defective products, unfulfilled quality expectations, and rejects.
Compliance with production standards is often made more difficult if these are not digitalised into the normal operation, but are only available as printed checklists, for example.
How can these existing potentials be leveraged by a networked and data-driven production system?
In launching suitable projects to eliminate the above-mentioned challenges, there is often a certain inhibition or reluctance on the part of the company. This is due to the anticipated complexity and the need to integrate numerous departments ranging from supply chain to production, quality assurance, maintenance and logistics.
With our approach, we systematically lower this inhibition threshold: our Proof of Concept serves as a lighthouse, which is initially implemented in a delimited area and focused on the Use Case 'machine alarms' (our proposal is a link-up of 5 lines in a plant, each line having 2 machines). This approach can be extended as required in a step-by-step, controlled procedure. Depending on the company's goals and the project scope, the scaling can either take place across several lines and/or plants or include additional Use Cases as required.
