Shop Floor Automations Newsletter – April 2012

Shop Floor Automations NewsletterThe following is an archived copy of the Shop Floor Automations Newsletter – April 2012 issue.

Congratulations to our contest winners!!!

Our “Success Stories” contest winner is Nathan Pierce from Lesco Automotive Industries in San Luis Obispo, CA. He won a $250 gift certificate to Amazon.com for submitting the best success story.

Hosted Machine Monitoring is now available!

Josh Davids from Scytec Corporation unveiled his company’s latest product – Hosted DataXchange. It allows customers to collect machine data and store it in a secure offsite location. Hosted DataXchange is available starting at $45 per machine per month without any long term commitment.  Volume discounts are also available starting at just 6 pieces of equipment. Collect multiple types of real time cycle status and have access to reporting and charting from anywhere with internet access.  Hosted DataXchange is easily integrated with network based machines using Fanuc Focas or MTConnect on Mazak, Okuma, and many others.

For Shop Floor Automations customers, until the end of May, we can offer 50% off the already low setup fee of $1,000. Call to set up a personal online presentation today!

Tech Tip

#3 of 4 Big Manufacturer Mistakes:

Padding a job with extra hours OR giving the customer a padded delivery promise

When you have no faith in the accuracy of your production schedules, the way to cushion the schedule is to deceive yourself by padding the time standards or padding the delivery promise dates. Rather than “just‐in‐time”, you now have “just‐in‐case” production management. Anytime you put incorrect information into the system, you make all of your answers incorrect. The problem becomes larger because the inflation of rates and dates grows as employees become less confident about the information they receive.

With JobPack Master Scheduler, the real‐time, finite capacity scheduling system, the accurate time standards and accurate machine/resource capacities deliver a reliable, achievable production schedule with dependable customer delivery dates. As production jobs are completed and reported on, you capture the actual performance results, so you can use the actual performance to fine‐tune the time standards for future production jobs. Gradually, employees and customers believe the accuracy of the production schedule. This reduces the amount of work‐in‐process inventory, minimizes expediting costs, and improves overall customer satisfaction.

Link to original newsletter HERE