“Mostly we are more machine-centric, more concerned about what’s happening on the machine,” he adds, “and so we have the capabilities of tapping into the machine and saying ‘What are you currently doing? Is the machine cur- rently cycling? Is it currently not running because of a certain reason? Is it down because of coolant leaks, or maybe it’s down because of preventive maintenance. Maybe there’s a quality problem or a programming problem as well. From a data-management side, we can actually collect and report real-time what’s happening with the machine, and this can be displayed on some kind of dashboard or on a Web interface. This could be in an office, or across the Web. So the idea is, in real-time, they can see what we advocated—if you put something in front of the operator, they can know where they stand and can be measured themselves.”
Offering operators some feedback with an LCD screen for their machine that is green for cycling or blue for idle, can help make machinists on the shop floor more competitive with
New iVET version of Henning Software’s Visual EstiTrack ERP software will allow manufacturing customers to check key vital stats via iPads and iPhones.
each other, he adds. “The idea is to give the operators some feedback, and then obviously management wants to see the utilization of equipment and productivity. We capture the data in real time, and put it all available to everybody.” The data collection systems also allow historical reporting, Mercurio notes. “That’s important to go back and say ‘How did things perform last week, or yesterday, or over the night