Manufacturers dream of a simple manufacturing management process.
Here at AspectPT, we witness customers realise that simple and effective manufacturing management is a reality as they go on their MES implementation journey with us. We literally see the penny drop when they realise just how their manufacturing life is going to be improved – everyday.
Penny drop 1. Demo time – much more than just scheduling
A lot of customers initially request a demo because they need to streamline manufacturing scheduling. Their production planner is pulling their hair out trying to manually schedule a factory. They tell us even when their planner has gone through many cumbersome steps to create a schedule, it is out of date the minute it is distributed to staff. This is affecting delivery to customers and they need a better way.
During the AspectPL demo they realise they can ditch the Excel spreadsheets and have an ERP integrated MES. This can reduce the time it takes for a planner to create a schedule by up to 65%. Because the schedule is linked to production machines it allows planners to monitor and adjust the schedule on the fly. No more paper, no more restrictive and cumbersome schedule creation, no more relying on one person who alone knows how to generate the schedule.
The real penny drop however is when they realise that solving their scheduling problems is just the tip of the ice berg of improvements an MES provides. They learn that a genuine MES (like AspectPL) will analyse accurate data collected at each manufacturing moment. This will reveal the truth about their manufacturing processes and this data will enable more productivity on their factory floor.
“The biggest benefit is that AspectPL has increased the transparency of our manufacturing processes. Because of this, we are learning about the constraints of our current manufacturing processes. Once you understand your constraints you can find ways to solve, eliminate or plan around them.”
Jon Kirby, Manufacturing Manager, Hansen Products, NZ.
Penny drop 2. Implementation time – proactive manufacturing management
At MES implementation time Production Planners are the first to see a penny drop as they realise how AspectPL is going to make both their scheduling and production lives so much easier. We have witnessed production planners jumping up and down on the spot when they can see all the production machines ‘live’ on the schedule.
They see how they can schedule a week’s worth of production in minutes rather than hours and if they want to make changes – they can, just like that, on the fly. Because AspectPL is hard wired to production machines on the factory floor, users know the exact machine status at any time. They can view live data like machine cycle speed, job completion time, volume of items and the reject rate.
“The AspectPL scheduler is very easy to use – it’s very intuitive and takes little time to schedule. We schedule 250 work orders per month – previously this took 3 days to complete, now it takes only 1 day. You can easily move jobs from machine to machine and look at ‘what if’ scenarios.”
Jennine Newey, Production Planner, Cormack Packaging, Australia.
Penny drop 3. Secondary training time – data that makes dollars
3 months after implementation customers start understanding the scope of data AspectPL can provide. This is when AspectPT’s Technical Manager Bob Dedekind conducts secondary-level training so businesses can leverage the most out of their new MES.
Some customers tell us they were previously literally in the dark about factory productivity. Calculating OEE was so difficult that they didn’t bother or rarely measured it. Now measuring OEE is an automatic output of AspectPL they can now use this as a benchmark for their productivity.
“Previously calculating OEE was a significant task. It took a week and a half to download and analyse a month’s production. Now with AspectPL it takes 20 seconds and because it’s easy to calculate, we constantly review it. This means we are supplying more product; production is on time and our labour costs have reduced.”
Luke Sutherland Operations Manager, Cromford Pipe, Australia
Customers learn how the transparency they now have highlights changes they can make for efficiencies. They start drilling down into the data and seeing where they have gaps (inefficient OEE), hold ups (slow die changes), or raw material discrepancies (start-up rejects).
Data collection enables actual performance and root cause analysis and exportable graphs. For example, quality issues can be traced to (what) job it is, (when) was it produced and (who) packed it.
“The traceability AspectPL provides gives our customers confidence that we can meet quality, capacity and delivery requirements.”
Brett Hopwood, General Manager, Pharmapac, NZ
There is a solution for manufacturers that are worn down by the drudgery of running a production floor manually, inefficiently and separately from other business data (ERP). Make your everyday manufacturing life so much easier. Connect and visualise your production floor with a digital platform (MES) that’s purpose built for manufacturing – and get at least 3 penny drops along the way.
