Process Improvement Monitoring the Shop Floor
Without shop-floor monitoring systems, manufacturers cannot effectively employ OEE metrics and lean manufactur- ing, said Dave Edstrom, president and chairman, MTCon- nect Institute (McLean, VA). At the MTConnect conference last April, the new MTConnect Challenge was presented, aiming to spur development of advanced manufacturing intelligence applications using the MTConnect standard. Edstrom said shop-floor monitoring is a must for both OEE and lean. “I think a lot of people are kidding themselves, because if you don’t have the data, you can’t be doing OEE or lean,” Edstrom said.
MTConnect is an open-source, royalty-free protocol for sharing machine data using the XML and HTTP standards which Edstrom said allows manufacturers to easily get data from machines, including older legacy equipment, through MTConnect agents and adapters. The read-only protocol has gained many converts, with major machine builders, controls developers and manufacturing software companies supporting it to more seamlessly share manufacturing equipment data. The protocol now supports the ISO 13999 standard for speci- fications for tooling data, which simplifies sharing of standard- ized tooling information between manufacturing companies. “The myth among machine tool builders is that it doesn’t benefit them, but when you talk to them, they’re differentiating
To date, shop-floor monitoring hasn’t really taken off in the machine tool industry, with estimates that only 4% of shops monitor machines, though that number could be much lower. “Knowing what your machines are doing is the first step,” said Brian Sides, director of technology, Okuma America Corp. (Charlotte, NC). “That means are they running or not? “We’ve been a proponent of machine monitoring for years,” Sides added. “I’m seeing more interest. It’s really taken hold in the last couple years or less. The most mature part of MTConnect is the machine monitoring, and some big customers are putting it in their bid spec.”
OEE, TEEP Keys to Lean Process Optimization OEE and TEEP are similar machine performance metrics but TEEP is measured against total calendar time. Each provide key views into how manufacturing processes are performing and pro- vide critical data for manufacturers to improve operations. “From my perspective there are always two ways for any manufacturer to improve their processes. One is by implementing lean manu- facturing and the other is to innovate their existing manufactur- ing processes,” said Sri Atluru, senior manufacturing engineer, process integration, Sandvik Coromant (Fair Lawn, NJ). “There is a fine line between lean and innovation—lean management is mostly concerned with targeting the elimina- tion of wasteful content or resources in your process flow, and improving the existing productivity of your shop floor,” Atluru noted. “Innovation is different in the sense that it has the capability to redesign your whole manufacturing process. “Metrics like OEE and TEEP are very critical because management always wants a way to quantify the whole manu- facturing process,” Atluru added. “OEE and TEEP provide a metric that quantifies the whole production flow in your shop floor. And it’s not just OEE or TEEP, you could also use some- thing like SPC to also monitor your process flow and see what is the variability in your process flow.”
All new DMG / Mori Seiki machines with the MAPPS control come equipped with MTConnect V1.1-compliant adapters, enabling remote monitoring of machines via the Web.
themselves by being open, and it’s saving these machine tool builders direct money,” Edstrom said. Most builders support- ing MTConnect have included agents and adapters for the protocol with newer machines for free, he added, or charge for a nominal fee on adapters for older legacy equipment.
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OEE provides a way to trace back the whole process flow and find out which part of the process flow is actually con- tributing to this wasteful content, he noted. “There is a fine balance when you say that, because OEE depends on the way that you collect your data. If you collect very accurate data, it is possible to trace back your problem or trace back your bad OEE to this particular source. But if you do not have accurate data, if you do not do real-time data collection, it becomes very hard to trace back why your OEE or your TEEP is very low. It’s like ‘garbage in and garbage out.’”
Photo courtesy DMG / Mori Seiki
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