Machine monitoring is becoming more and more important for manufacturing in 2021. However, is it right for your shop floor? Moreover, is your shop floor ready for it? Here we will break it down into the “yes” and “no” to whether or not machine monitoring is something that can bring large value to your manufacturing process.
Yes if –
1. The difference between planning and execution hurts your profitability.
This is the #1 benefit that machine monitoring brings to the shop floor. We all know that manufacturing shop floor has a lot of unplanned surprises and there’s no way to plan everything perfectly. As a result of that reality, operators or machinists need to make adjustments to get things done. However, are those “necessary changes” hurting your profitability? and by how much? Knowing the ground truth of your machines’ utilization is the most effective and direct way to understand your shop floor reality.
Only by knowing the true execution that you can manage the difference between execution and planned. By being able to manage these differences, you will be able to gauge how much room is needed for future job planning.
2. You run lights-out operations
Lights-out operation is what can boost your business’ profitability because it allows you to make progress unmanned. Even so, starting a second shift and lights-out operation is always risky because you may check back next morning or on Monday only to realize that something was off and the process was interrupted.
This scenario is a strong suit for machine monitoring in the way that it can send an alert message to you about unplanned interruptions 24-7. This usually takes the form of in-app alerts, text messaging, or email notifications.
3. Shop floor manager is tired of looking over every machinist’s shoulder and would like to address more important issues.
When it comes to supervising what’s going on on the shop floor, there’s nothing more effective than keeping an eye on every single process. The problem is, this approach is time consuming and prevents you from doing something else that’s as important if not more vital to your business.
4. You want objective and real-time KPI to reward responsible employees.
KPI drives your facility’s productivity when being designed fairly and measured objectively. Knowing how exactly your facility is being run removes all the gray areas and sets the tone of performance measurement.
No if –
1. Everything is fine as is.
This is very important. If you are happy with how your shop floor is operating and it’s highly efficient already, then there’s no need to invest in the technology if it’s not necessary. Just because other people are doing so, doesn’t necessary mean your shop floor can’t be run with another way.
2. You are almost always on-site, and the size of the organization allows you to oversee everything yourself.
If your shop’s scale does not justify automation, then there probably isn’t a need for it. The most effective way, if the scale allows so, is to always be there to supervise. Machine monitoring only makes sense if you are not always present and you would like the shop to be supervised even when you are not there.
3. Budget constraint
Money is too important to be wasted. If you don’t have the budge for machine monitoring, there are other ways to improve your shop’s efficiency. Contact us if you would like to evaluate what works the best for your shop floor.