2013 – Adapt or Die

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Information presented at the MTConnect 2012 conference in Cincinnati, OH. clearly emphasized that the Manufacturing world is going to change extremely fast in the next few years.

Many examples of “How and Why a Royalty-free and Open-Source Standard is Revolutionizing the Business and Technology of Manufacturing” are provided in the book written by Dave Edstrom, President of MTConnect, To Measure Is to Know.  The main point of the book is that the new manufacturing equipment will have a common “Bluetooth type data” speak-ability to interface with software monitoring, your enterprise resource planning (ERP), and any other software, including your financial software.

This common speak-ability will allow for the capturing and linking of detailed real-time performance monitoring of shop floor actions, with planned road maps executing customer work orders for real-time proactive intervention, and, more importantly, historical information to analyze for strategic competitive advantage and continuous improvement.

Stop and read the above paragraph again.  Think of what “accurate real-time shop floor critical information” would mean in your current work environment.  You could make better decisions throughout your daily manufacturing processes, regarding order tracking, quality, rework, overall scheduling optimization, customer delivery, and most importantly, the impact on profit.  Detailed historical data could dramatically improve job estimates, material usage, updated work order planning values by individual work station, and optimizing product mix decisions using “Contribution by Constraint hour” information.[1]  Guidelines would be implemented for the sequence of handling unplanned events and would be made visible from the shop floor to the top floor, enabling all levels of the organization to automatically take immediate corrective action.

Now you might say “that is great for those manufacturers getting new equipment, but we aren’t in that group.”  This is where the “Adapt or Die” situation becomes visible.  You can either choose the current criteria that is on the market and remain “blinded” because you don’t have the new manufacturing equipment listed above (and in turn, you can get eaten up by the competition with the new equipment).  Or you can launch your own new real-time information revolution on your already existing equipment.

So how can this be done?  How can you launch a revolution on your existing equipment?  Your organization must first be able to recognize that the compatible MTConnect hardware/software information capability is already available for ALL Legacy machines.  Providers such as the Memex MERLIN system and the advanced Financial OEE value stream analysis can be applied specific to your site using your current Line of Business product portfolio.[2]

But what evidence exists except for this Blog?  A brief review of Modern Machine Shops “2012 Top Shop” survey indicates that of the 350 completed surveys, the top 12% show that the average Top Shop versus the average of the “Other” shops are 70% more likely to do Continuous Improvement, 75% more likely to do Value Stream Analysis, 150% more likely to do Theory of Constraints and have 12% higher OEE. (These results are all from data driven activities).  Over half of the completed surveys indicated that they were Job Shop environments.  Top Shops show that the days between order placed and product delivery is 39% less, and the Top Shop customer growth rate is double that of the “Other” shops.

Overall, the “Adapt or Die” scenario is about launching a new information revolution on the already existing equipment, focusing on speed and proficiency.  The real question is “how fast can we implement real-time data collection and incorporate the education to leverage the new information revolution?”  If you are not in front of the competition, you are behind it, and chances are that you will experience several set backs along the way.

– Robert Hansen

Author OEE: A Powerful Production/Maintenance Tool for Increased Profits

R.C. Hansen Consulting, LLC.

www.OEE-College.com

[1] 20% More Profit for Free – Last weeks Memex blog

[2] www.OEE-College.com

20% More Profit – For Free

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The Modern Machine Shop magazine’s 2012 “Top Shop” survey results indicated that the median point of “other” machine shops (approximately the bottom 90% of shops sending in >350 surveys) was at a financial performance level seventy six percent below the TS median point for profit per machine.  Couple this with the information that TS are 150% more likely to apply Theory Of Constraints TOC methodology in their business/operating decisions and that TS are data driven.   Why is this an advantage?

One big reason for the TS competitive advantage could be in the data collection and analysis of true OEE by product at each machine in their product flow-lines.  This provides the actual throughput minutes per machine by product and allows an analysis similar to the “Bob’s Bolt Company” (pgs. 250 -260 of “The Constraints Management Handbook” by Cox and Spencer, St. Lucie Press/APICS series, Boca Raton, FL.) The example provides the necessary financial and operating information and examines a Line of Business with 4 products being produced by a series of 3 work stations. (A matrix of 12 ‘throughput minutes required by work station’ data points.)

It goes through the details of determining the best weekly product mix selection based on Market Demand using 1.) Traditional Cost Accounting using Product Profit, 2.) Traditional Cost Accounting using Contribution per Direct Labor Hour, and 3.) Theory Of Constraints and Exploiting the Systems Constraint(s).  The example results were $1508 profit for both methods 1 and 2, however method 3 resulted in $2265 profit, a 50% increase in profits and a different product mix selection!  Perhaps the data points were biased to favor the theme of the book?

To determine the strength of using the TOC approach, the author of this article took the 12 input data points and randomly applied them to the four product flow-lines 25 times and repeated the analysis of the three approaches for each new configuration.  The results were quite enlightening.

In every case, the TOC approach results either equaled the better of the other 2 approaches or exceeded both approaches (12 out of 25 times).  And the average profit using the TOC approach was twenty percent higher for the 25 investigations.

Perhaps you are not doing shop floor auto-data collection and using TOC as an advantage which means you are probably miss-using your existing assets (people, machines, materials) and unknowingly selecting the wrong weekly product mix?

 – Robert Hansen

Author OEE: A Powerful Production/Maintenance Tool for Increased Profits

R.C. Hansen Consulting, LLC.

www.OEE-College.com

 

Top 5 Reasons to use Memex MERLIN MES for OEE & DNC

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Serial communications is old outdated technology.  It has slow transfer speeds, it is slow to load today’s big programs into controls, and it is especially unreliable on long distance runs.  MERLIN is built on today’s modern, reliable IT Ethernet network structure.

To help deliver operational efficiency with production visibility to your manufacturing enterprise, here are the top 5 reasons to work with the award winning Memex MERLIN for OEE and DNC.

1)  Memex MERLIN is a true Manufacturing Execution System.

  • MERLIN MES is vertically and horizontally integrated across the enterprise.
    • Vertically integrated means that it executes ERP’s planned production schedule.  It takes all the work orders from your ERP system, mirrors them on a machine and manufacturing cell or assembly basis, and at completion (end of work order and end of shift) sends the ERP an upload of actual results on how production actually ran.  This enables a comparison to be made of how the production ran for an accurate time and cost picture.
    • Horizontally integrated means that the complete shop floor flow-line of production is viewed and communicated in real-time.  This enables situational analysis, bottleneck identification, and resources to be allocated (when and where they’re needed) in the shortest period of time –  all with historical, traceable reporting.
    • Integration means objective visibility about utilization.  True OEE metrics, product run and cost standards, and the requirements of the operator for resources (engineering, maintenance, crane, dunnage, 1st off quality check, etc.) can all be communicated to all stakeholders in real-time.

2)  MERLIN is an independent and unobtrusive monitoring solution.

  • Software protocols and hardware network connectivity (if required) that are electrically (optically) isolated from the control.
  • MERLIN does not affect the machine’s performance.  It does not use programs or memory, it simply listens to the machine.

3)  Memex MERLIN system can operate independent of any DNC solution.

  • Any existing DNC solutions in your site can still be used in conjunction with MERLIN
  • Or, if you  prefer, you can use MERLIN’s built in DNC.

4)  MERLIN is built on the latest & proven technology of the Microsoft platform.

  • MERLIN incorporates MTConnect, OPC, Focas and other advanced protocols for machine communication.
  • It is built on reliable Ethernet network (wired or wireless) rather than the older, slower, and unreliable serial based communication technology.

5)  Memex MERLIN system really is the BEST VALUE solution.

  • MERLIN has delivered our customers 10% to 50% or more improvement in efficiency, all thanks to its horizontal and vertical integration,
  • It adheres to ISA-95 standards of machine connectivity and fits with your IT network infrastructure.
  • It is a safe and proven technology that is being used globally.

To find out more about these 5 points, and even more reasons why Memex MERLIN is the best MES solution, contact Memex sales today at 866-573-3895 or via email to salesgroup@memex.ca

To learn more about Memex’s MERLIN, check out these short videos on topics covered in Memex’s OEE Solution Series webinars.

An accurate OEE resource

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Memex has been working very closely with the team from MTConnect. We also have an excellent rapport with Mr. Robert Hansen, author and consultant of OEE.

Robert authored an awesome resource book on OEE… but I’ll let Mr. Dave Edstrom, CEO of  tell you about it.. http://photonsandelectrons.blogspot.ca/2012/12/great-manufacturing-book-overall.html

For anyone really looking for a practical resource written in a direct clear illustrative manner, then this would be my first choice.

Also, you may want to check out Bob Hansen’s unpretentious web page for more information on his video series “OEE college”.  http://www.oee-college.com/

An excellent series of training sessions designed in bite sized segments for everyone in your organization. Great for lunch and learns! I’m speaking from experience…

Memex can provide extreme value in collecting and presenting critical production data, but the end user also needs to understand WHAT the data means in terms of effective long term sustainable efficiency improvements. The MERLIN system can leverage at least a 10% productivity boost in a very short period of time. Enough to qualify a rather short ROI period. But the real value is in leveraging the visibility and actionable data to grow your productivity by as much as 100%. All of this leads to a very impressive profitability gain.

Tim Smith,
Memex Automation

Why Lord Kelvin Would Love MTConnect

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Every now and then we read an article that has immense depth and meaning for our industry. Below is one such article, just published, written by an esteemed colleague, Dave Edstrom, Director, The Office of Strategic Innovation, AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology. I reproduce it here with all credit to Dave.

Highlights:

  • The big reason why only 4 to 5 percent of all machine tools are being monitored today comes down to two reasons, technical and cultural.
  • The value of any manufacturing shop floor’s network is the number of pieces of manufacturing equipment that can speak MTConnect squared.
  • Think of MTConnect as Bluetooth for manufacturing.
  • In order to quantify how well a manufacturing plant or job shop is doing, you first must easily get the data and put it in a standard quantified form. {Note he refers to Job Shop in the same thinking as a manufacturing plant}
  • “MTConnect — to measure is to know.”

Why Lord Kelvin Would Love MTConnect

NIST was my account for six years starting in the mid 1980s when I was at Sun Microsystems. I loved having NIST as an account because, as a Systems Engineer, NIST was always doing something very interesting and pushing the limits on what Sun could provide in terms of computing power. One of my first visits to NIST, I was brought into a conference room and saw the following engraved in the floor:
“I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be.”
Lord Kelvin (Sir William Thomson)

That phrase is built into the DNA of computer science and science in general. To provide a simple example of this, when you walk into a data center that houses thousands of computers in countless racks, you will find that every single one of those computers is monitored extremely closely. According to industry and academic experts only 4 to 5 percent of machine tools are monitored today. This percentage is mind boggling to me. How can any plant possibly make intelligent decisions if they can not quantify what a machine tool is doing?
The big reason why only 4 to 5 percent of all machine tools are being monitored today comes down to two reasons, technical and cultural. Too often when you speak to someone at a smaller job shop or plant, the reason for not monitoring is the cost and/or time to implement. MTConnect addresses the technical side of the challenge by making it is easy to get data off a machine tool in an open, royalty-free and standard fashion. MTConnect ‘s motto is “Different Devices, Common Connection.” MTConnect is all about dramatically lowering the barrier to entry to enabling a machine tool to speak to the rest of the world in an open fashion.
MTConnect can address the technical side of this challenge, but how do you change the culture component of this equation? As we all know, culture is a huge issue when driving change. This is true whether it is in a business or any other activity that involves humans. Education is the key to driving culture changes. There are many lessons from the computer industry that can be applied to manufacturing to drive change in the culture through education.
Let’s look at some of the laws in the computer industry and see if there are similarities in manufacturing. Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet, made a statement that has now become known as “Metcalfe’s Law.” Metcalfe’s Law basically states that the value of any network is the number of users or devices connected to the network squared. If we apply Metcalfe’s Law to manufacturing, we would modify it slightly to state: The value of any manufacturing shop floor’s network is the number of pieces of manufacturing equipment that can speak MTConnect squared. Why MTConnect squared and not just the number of pieces of manufacturing equipment squared? Because it is MTConnect that makes these pieces of equipment able to all speak the language of the internet, which is XML. XML is an abbreviation for eXtensible Markup Language and it is the default language on the internet today. XML makes it extremely easy for software applications to talk to MTConnect-enabled manufacturing equipment.
One of the most common misconceptions about MTConnect is that it is an application that you purchase. MTConnect is a protocol that defines how manufacturing equipment will speak to the outside world as well as dictionary of what these manufacturing terms mean. Think of MTConnect as Bluetooth for manufacturing with a dictionary of terms. Why do I emphasize the dictionary? Because the dictionary gives meaning to the manufacturing terms. For example, imagine the English language without a dictionary. What would we have? We would have 26 letters but no words. Without a dictionary of words, we would have everyone defining their own words, and that is exactly what we had with manufacturing prior to MTConnect
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld liked to say, “there are known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns.” Stated another way, “you don’t know what you don’t know.” The real purpose of MTConnect is to quantify the known unknowns and provide the framework to discover the unknown unknowns. You can’t manage what you don’t know. And unless you are quantifying what you don’t know, then you are shooting from the hip, which is never a good idea.
So, why would Lord Kelvin LOVE MTConnect? Because in order to quantify how well a manufacturing plant or job shop is doing, you first must easily get the data and put it in a standard quantified form. That is exactly what MTConnect does. Getting the data in an open and royalty-free way is what will allow you to first monitor what you are doing and then to share the information with all your applications and all your partners. While the most obvious use of getting common information out of a piece of equipment is monitoring, that is just the tip of the iceberg. The real win with MTConnect is when quantified information is available anytime, anywhere to any application, to any partner and on any device, it drives up productivity. I imagine Lord Kelvin would change MTConnect’s mantra to: “MTConnect — to measure is to know.”

Dave Edstrom
Director, The Office of Strategic Innovation
AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology