Monitoring machines in real time

If you’re considering implementing a real-time machine monitoring system and looking for solid reasons to make the investment, you’re in for a pleasant surprise. Real-time machine monitoring and overall equipment effectiveness software can help address many issues, whether they’re obvious or not.

There are a number of warning signs indicating that it might be time to investigate acquiring OEE software:

• Jobs aren’t being delivered on time. Real-time machine monitoring software easily identifies the most-chronic downtime and quality reasons that are impacting a shop floor so they can be addressed head-on.
• You manually track uptime. Many companies are beginning to realize that manual tracking is simply too prone to human error to be relied upon. Automated machine monitoring removes that risk and gives an accurate window into production. OEE software is all about knowing the utilization rate—not “thinking you know.”

The value of being able to automatically collect data from machines and use it to provide real-time visualizations and notifications really gets hammered home when it is understood how easy it is for a machine monitoring system to “X-ray” a production process.

With machine monitoring and OEE software, shop managers and machine operators can view a dashboard that provides simple, color-coded, at-a-glance snapshots as to whether a job is performing at or below expectations. Image courtesy MachineMetrics.

An overall equipment effectiveness tracking system incorporates:

• A touch-screen tablet that gives shop managers and machine operators an immediate, real-time display of production data and statistics from the shop floor.
• A scorecard report that provides a real-time OEE overview for each job on a shift-by-shift basis.
• A dashboard that offers operators and managers simple, color-coded, at-a-glance snapshots as to whether a job is performing at or below expectations.
• A reporting and tracking system that provides a laser-focused view of part quality, planned and unplanned downtime, overall shop performance and setup times.

Moreover, access to this critical information is available from virtually any internet-enabled, touch-screen device.