There is a whole new wind that is creating a wave of change in production environments: this is why the operators have already made all the obvious changes to their production line and they squeezed their systems to the last.

Total annual average productivity growth was 2,7% in the five years preceding the global financial crisisbut it was by only 0,7% in the last five years, signifying that Lean and ERP productivity efforts have now reached the maximum achievable performance.

This is because the speed of production processes has increased and, for some organizations, they have become so fast, that the rest of the business cannot keep up. Now is the time for the industry to go beyond the productivity of the single line and to concentrate efforts so that new strategic visions can facilitate continuous improvement.

When it comes to improving OT (Operations) performance, there are three important points to consider.

The first and most obvious is this: it is not possible to further optimize the plant until the processes are visible and under control. Manufacturers have long had tools to help operators gain more exposure.

Today traditional sensors and systems have given way to more sophisticated systems that look beyond the performance of the equipment itself. The manufacturing production systems, or MES, have entered the market to create the connection between automation systems and ERP, offering greater visibility as in the case of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), quality, labor and work-in-process through tracking, tracing, and management of advanced analyses.

However, only 20% of plants worldwide use an MES system.

 

 

Why is MES important for the factory?

 

Not having an MES is a major misstep for manufacturers, especially those struggling with operational inefficiency, because the new visibility afforded by the MES has significant benefits for higher efficiency and reduced costs that can be achieved in a short period of time. Visibility into the product creation process and inventory management, execution of product planning and genealogy, order fulfillment, quality, efficiency and analysis of key issues lead to benefits such as reduction of delivery times, reduction of labor costs, as well as a considerable saving of time and indirect costs (elimination of paperwork and data entry, reduction of work in process inventory, increase of machine utilization, etc… ).

MES can help manufacturers do all of this without the need for significant setup or customization.

 

The second consideration around improving Operations with the use of a MES includes the inclusion of all areas of your company, in an effort to achieve efficiency gains. Operators have used tools to ensure the line is running at peak performance and can quickly identify faulty pieces of equipment, but other areas of the business may not have achieved the same level of visibility (and understanding) into their data.

Everyone works with what is made available for their specific area.

 Some examples:

  • the supervisor needs information to optimize flow of the product, theefficiency of the machine and the operator e handle incidents safety.
  • Il supply chain manager must optimize the revenue targets and annual growth by reducing costs.
  • I operations managers they focus on the increase of production efficiency monthly and quarterly and on reduction of steps without added value in the production.

It's safe to assume they analyze data to handle these things, however Gartner reports that over 70% of factory generated data is not used: it is therefore necessary to avoid incurring the DRIP syndrome (DATA RICH INFORMATION POOR).

Any visit to a manufacturing plant will reveal the use of paper and manual processes – shifting this paradigm is exactly what can give manufacturing operations an edge.

Today's technology makes it easy to give each person access to the information they need to do their job.

 

The third consideration is the one that has the greatest potential impact for your business.

Once processes are made visible and a culture of data capture/usage is created across the enterprise, the structure itself will be able to highlight what human eyes cannot see.

It will increase the ability to examine

review business data, predict failures, identify root causes, and analyze the interaction of various processes on efficiency. While manufacturers have long worried about the infrastructure and security costs of big data, building a cloud-based analytics and logging environment allows them to cost-effectively and reliably transform their business data into a usable format for increasingly go deeper.

Using the cloud to produce data often leads to reduced infrastructure costs and increased security, as well as unprecedented visibility.

LINK TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE ON GE DIGITAL SITE