How Can You Get Your Manufacturing Operations Team Working Remotely?
You rely on your manufacturing operations team to expedite production orders, to ensure that targets are met and orders fulfilled. With paper-based production systems, it’s impossible for operations teams to manage work in progress, from home. A Manufacturing Execution System (MES) enables your operations team to be just as effective remotely as when they are in the factory. In this article, we’ll look at the key features of an MES that allow operations teams to work remotely. Instant Communication With Shop Floor Messaging This means that shop floor operators can directly message members of the operations team at home when […] Read more
How Can Manufacturers Work Remotely?
Remote working has been popular with software companies and freelancers for the past 10 years, but it hasn’t really taken off yet with manufacturers. With the current global pandemic of coronavirus, most government advice is to remote work where possible. So, in this post, we’ll share our experience of how to shift to remote working with specific thoughts of how manufacturers can do it. Who Can Work Remotely in a Manufacturing Business? When deciding who can remotely work, it comes down to a set of decisions about what tools are available for the employee to carry out their job from […] Read more
What is the ROI for a Manufacturing Execution System?
Manufacturers are now using digital manufacturing software to integrate Industry 4.0 technology in their operations. This enables them to go paperless on their shop floor and to improve their manufacturing processes. However, a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) can be a significant capital expenditure. So, how do you justify this? ROI From Labour Productivity Improvements Produce more from your existing labour by reducing time spent capturing shop floor data, product traceability, and quality inspections. By using a Manufacturing Execution System to automatically capture this information, our clients typically see a 10 – 20 % productivity improvement and a positive Return on […] Read more
Ultimate Guide to Manufacturing Execution Systems
In this article, I will take you, step by step through each of the stages required to set up and implement an MES in your manufacturing organisation. Overview Step 1 – Creating a Secure Networked Factory Step 2 – Communicating with Devices Step 3 – Connecting Manufacturing Processes Step 4 – Improving Your Business with Production Data Analytics Overview We are currently experiencing the 4th Industrial Revolution. Machines and manual operations are being connected, bringing the benefits of automation to entire production processes and factories. An overview of the 4 Industrial Revolutions (Source: Wikipedia) A MES is one way to […] Read more
Manufacturing Capacity Planning Tools
How To Do Manufacturing Capacity Planning An overview of the theory behind capacity planning, and tools that are available to help aid more effective manufacturing capacity planning. However, as the manufacturing process becomes more complicated, it can be time-consuming and frustrating to manually perform capacity planning calculations. This often leads to sub-optimal capacity planning which either disappoints customers or underutilises resources. Both of these results will have a negative effect on company sales and reputation. So, in this article, we’ll take a look at some of the tools available to help perform more effective capacity planning. Tool #1 – Excel […] Read more
7 Ways to Grow With an MES
Investing in new production processes is a major step for any business. It requires balancing of the costs in time and money versus the benefits the business will reap in the future. Using an MES helps you succeed by focusing on what your customer wants at every point on the shop floor. Here, I’ve summarised some of the key benefits our manufacturing clients have realised following their adoption of paperless manufacturing software. Business Growth By using an MES, the specific sequence of tasks required for reliable, repeatable production processes become defined for your business. As the business grows, this helps […] Read more
What Are Manufacturing Travelers in 2020?
There are lots of traditional manufacturing travelers and paper work instructions causing problems in otherwise innovative and successful manufacturing businesses. In this article, I’ll explore why they are used and what alternatives manufacturing companies have? Why are Travelers not Working? Travelers are a great initial solution to the problem of instructing the shop floor what to build and how to build it. However, the main problem with paper-based travelers is that they cause lots of duplicated work. Each production operator must fill in details as they work. This is done by recording measurements, signing their name or using their stamp […] Read more
Digitalising Manufacturing
I visited the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry for a Digitalising Manufacturing Conference, where I had the chance to discuss the benefits that digital manufacturing can bring to manufacturing businesses, and also some of the roadblocks to its full adoption in the UK. Impact of Digital Manufacturing Carlos Lopez Gomez discussed the results of an Innovate UK funded study into the impacts of Digital Manufacturing globally. The study is aiming to collect and analyse evidence on the potential improvements from digital manufacturing. Most predictions of improved manufacturing productivity have focussed on expected, rather than observed impacts. So this Study is […] Read more
LabVIEW Web Vis
Modern Business Need Data Across the Organisation Web interfaces to engineering software applications is a key requirement of modern applications. Control, test and monitoring applications that perform specific tasks in an engineering business, used to focus on that task and store their data locally. The primary user of the application would benefit from the tasks performed and the data acquired. However, other stakeholders in the business would find it difficult to access this information. One of the main benefits of Industry 4.0 is the free availability of manufacturing data throughout an organisation, to aid decision making at all levels. For […] Read more
New MES Features to Improve Manufacturing Productivity and Quality
We’ve had a busy couple of months at Metis Automation developing new MES features for our flagship paperless manufacturing software product Tascus. In January, we began a series of customer interviews to get feedback on what features we could add that would bring value to manufacturers. As a result, we have recently added the following features: Display smart work instructions. These can populate with values taken from step measurements. This makes it easier for your production operators to follow complex work instructions and reduces the chance of errors. Display work instructions with CAD models. This means that you can cut out […] Read more