In recent years, information technology (IT) has
brought a range of improvements to the way companies are run. Systems today
support everything from better decision making to greater efficiency in
processes, from the back office to the customer-facing front line. But in
manufacturing, these optimizations have not yet fully reached manufacturing
operations. A synergistic amalgam of Lean principals and IT can address this.
That is not to say that sophisticated technology
has not found its way to the shop floor—it has. But often, systems differ from
operation to operation. Many are internally designed custom applications that
are difficult to upgrade and maintain. In many cases, systems do not provide
the full range of functionality needed in today’s manufacturing environments.
What’s more, factory systems often are not integrated with each other, or with
company enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. As a result, manufacturers
find it difficult to keep data up to date and synchronized across operations. Factory
managers lack the detailed, timely information and the tools needed to guide
day-today operations—not to mention improvement programs such as Lean
Manufacturing.
It is RSM Astute - Lemon Technologies' point of
view that evolving technology is making those gaps unnecessary. Companies can
move their factories forward with sophisticated sets of tools such as reporting
applications, dashboards, scheduling systems and integration software, known
collectively as manufacturing excellence systems (MES). With MES, companies can
weave together factory systems, integrate them with ERPs, give factory
operators and management better information about schedules and shop-floor
processes, and make better use of automated information flows.
To get started, diamond companies need to know what
today’s MES solutions offer, and the business case for implementing these
technologies. Companies should question if their factory's current
manufacturing IT landscape properly leverages today’s technology capabilities
in order to provide them the required tools to become best in class.
Understanding how modern, mature MES solutions fit
into companies helps bring greater efficiency, speed and precision to
manufacturing, meeting customers’ needs more cost-effectively and accurately, and
positioning themselves for high performance over the long term.
Assessing the benefits
The value of having accurate, timely information to
support manufacturing may be self-evident. However, getting a more precise view
of the business case for MES is not always so simple. Benefits can be difficult
to measure: For example, if cycle days go down, is it due to the better insight
into process cycles or performance benchmarks provided by MES or nature of the
rough diamonds? Or, metrics such as overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) may
actually appear to be lower than expected as a result of the MES’s automated
collection of data, because operators are no longer able to “interpret” figures
to their advantage. Faced with this complexity, many companies have skipped the
formal evaluation phase after implementing MES and therefore cannot provide
evidence of the improvements brought by MES.
In addition, our experience has shown that MES can
bring benefits in terms of improved management of IT. The traditional approach,
with its disparate, non-integrated technologies found across the factory, can
lead to hidden IT costs that companies may not recognize. Such systems can also
increase security and backup risks, because they are beyond the reach of the
standards and methods of the central IT department. In essence, then, industrial
processes—the manufacturer’s core business—may be dependent on systems that are
vulnerable and not rigorously managed, and an outage could bring production to
a standstill.
With MES, on the other hand, the manufacturing IT
landscape becomes much easier to manage. Increased reliance on standard,
integrated solutions means that IT departments have fewer types of technologies
to support. Economies of scale can be brought to bear in both the purchase and
maintenance of systems. And better monitoring and centralized control over IT
makes it easier to ensure that effective security and business continuity
processes are in place.
Functionality of today’s MES solutions
The first step toward achieving those benefits is
to understand the functionality offered by today’s MES solutions. While
companies often grasp the importance of MES as a software layer integrating ERP
and shop-floor systems, many are less familiar with the range of functionality
MES provides— functionality that can help manufacturers increase efficiency and
productivity.
MES solutions are not a single “black box,” but
rather an array of tools and technologies. Solutions differ, of course, but Lemon
has created a general, high-level model illustrating the functional modules
that manufacturers can expect to find in a typical MES implementation.
Factory model. This model provides centralized storage for production data, such as
information about processes, departments, equipment, materials, personnel and
related parameters. If appropriate, the factory model can be linked with other
systems to enable actions such as the automatic synchronization of the Sales
function, market price information etc. in the company’s ERP system. This
central data storage reduces the need to track and coordinate data in various
systems. It also supports the Right First Time manufacturing principle:
consistent, centralized master data leads to less rework and waste, which
indirectly results in shorter throughput time and fewer complaints.
Detailed production scheduling and simulation. Typically, the production in most diamond
companies is based on the rough input without much correlation with the
customer or sales demand. Hence, there is no such role as production planning. Detailed
production scheduling modules of MES from Lemon provide the functionality
needed to go beyond that basic approach. It typically enable companies to use load
balancing, demand based planning, graphical representations etc. to develop and
compare several plans to find the optimum schedule; to schedule with a focus on
specific KPIs such as inventory costs or throughput times; to quickly adjust
actual schedules in the event of disruptions or rush orders; and to understand
the relationship between the production schedule and the distribution schedule.
Implementing such a system can help shorten throughput times, increase
efficiency and lower inventory costs. It may also lead to less-tangible
advantages, such as quality improvements driven by reductions in stress among factory
managers and workers.
Product definition management and production
execution management. To do their jobs, operators on the
shop floor need detailed instructions, such as product specifications, images
of the Sarin or Mbox plans, information about customer-specific instructions
related to specific orders, stone-specific instructions, and so on. Many
companies have traditionally managed this information using paper forms, packets
and other manual formats. MES solutions, on the other hand, provide such
information to operators electronically, in real time. This enables them to
quickly scan materials and, for example, determine whether they have the
correct and optimal plan based on demand and value and so on. Often, MES
systems can automatically send product-specific parameters to machines and
devices, reducing the need for manual intervention and reducing errors and time
in the process. Such functionality helps avoid waste and rework, which
indirectly shortens throughput time, helps reduce recalls and increases
customer satisfaction.
Mobile solutions, smart devices, wireless. Often, workers and managers move around in
production facilities to read data from sensors and take samples, and record
that information on paper forms. But today, smart devices and wireless
technologies make it possible to automatically read sensors and detect problems
such as calibration data and stone data. In situations where actual inspections
are still necessary, mobile solutions, such as smart phones and Wi-Fi-enabled
tablets, can provide instructions for workers and managers about the sequence
in which they have to collect data and when to take which stones. The data they
collect can be input into the mobile device and instantly made available to a
central control room and/or sales desks. Analyses of the data can be used to
quickly develop adjustments to the appropriate process settings, which in turn
can be immediately provided to the MES screen in the manager's room. The use of
such mobile solutions can help reduce risks while providing real-time insight
into processes, allowing production to respond quickly when changes are
required.
Electronic Books. Electronic Books are “flat” databases that can archive huge amounts of
data for a very long time. The purpose of the database is that Current process
results can be easily compared to those of, say, last week or even last year.
Thus, these are key to process optimization and can have a positive impact on
quality and throughput. Although most diamond companies have historical
databases in use, many are not yet using one at every location where it is
appropriate or the old data is not relevant or is partly deleted or rendered
non usable. Moreover, older systems often lack sound reporting capabilities, so
the data is left hidden in local silos. And in many cases, there are several
different softwares in place, which is a disadvantage from a systems maintenance
point of view.
Dashboard.
As in other areas of business, people working in factories can benefit from
business-intelligence functionality. However, to be effective in a production
setting, such systems need to provide information in real time and at a high
level of detail. Managers and Operators simply do not have time to scroll through
various screens and examine different fields to find information; they have to
concentrate on the physical process. Thus, it is essential to provide these
personnel the exact data that they need in a timely, user-friendly fashion.
That is the role of the factory dashboard—providing the appropriate information
in the appropriate format at the appropriate time to the appropriate users.
Dashboards can provide real-time information, often collected through
interfaces with other modules or distributed control / decision support systems.
This information is presented in different views to different audiences using a
single data source. For example, workers may need to see the actual production
and their incentives/penalties while
managers might need an overview of the cycle days, urgent demands,
process loss, yields etc. With the dashboard’s real-time insight into the
status of production orders, disruptions, quality issues, and so forth,
companies can be in position to respond to events before they become serious
issues—helping to bring down the cost of quality and increase efficiency.
Reports and genealogy. MES solutions provide standard reports about process
loss, production, productivity etc. A key advantage is that all reports stem
from the same source—a combination of automatically collected data from
programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and DSS, and information manually entered
into the MES during the production process by operators. As a result, the
company is working with a “single version of the truth.” Data can be fed
automatically into the ERP system, helping upper management feel confident that
it is working with valid information, and enabling decision makers across the
organization to focus on improving performance, rather than rechecking data. An
MES also opens the door to using standard report formats for all the factories
in a network to support benchmarking efforts. And compared to an ERP system, it
can provide far more detailed tracking and tracing to strengthen pipeline
integrity.
Workflow management. Workflow management functionality is an effective
tool for coordinating processes involving several departments and several
systems. For example, when a production department has produced a lot, quality
control has to inspect that lot. Based on what is checked by the QC department,
the sales team has to prepare the for distribution. The longer it takes for
departments to inform each other about the completion of their task, the longer
the throughput time will be. Workflow management can shorten the lag time of
handoffs, which in turn can have a significant impact in terms of shortening
lead times. In addition, the system’s “forcing” of employees to execute
specific steps can help improve quality and compliance.
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