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Become a Cloud technology MFG Adapter

the Cloud

Become a Cloud technology MFG Adapter

The manufacturing industry is slowly becoming a younger job field. The Manufacturing Institute states that 3.5 Million manufacturing jobs will become available within the next decade due to Millions of baby boomers retiring from the workforce in the near future. There are also new jobs created because of organic business growth to take into consideration. These new jobs will definitely be filled by a younger generation that embraces Cloud technology in their daily lives.

With a new generation coming into the manufacturing landscape, which contributes over $2 Trillion dollars to the American economy each year (according to the National Association of Manufacturers), they are going to understand that any time or production lost on their shop floor will make a huge impact on many people. This is why it is no surprise that 80 percent of large North American companies have implemented or are planning to adopt Cloud services, as the workforce gets younger.

“On the shop floor, manufacturers are aggregating data to gain insight on machine and equipment performance, part tracking, and even how to optimize [the] shop floor layout,” Kathy Webster said, who is the Media Communications Manager for The Association of Manufacturing Technology (AMT). “This is especially true as pressure mounts for manufacturers to bring products to market more quickly.”

“Cloud solutions like these are often quick to roll out and easy to customize,” Kathy continues. “Many also offer 24/7 support, meaning less stress on a company’s IT staff. They are easy to access at any time from anywhere, making them a natural fit for collaboration on supply chain, distribution, and service.”

Aside from the benefits that Cloud software and applications can have on your shop floor, these solutions also tend to be more economical, too. At trade shows that Shop Floor Automations attends, guests are astounded that there is a machine monitoring option that costs a mere $45 per month, per machine!

Want more information on how to embrace IIoT on your shop floor? Call us at (877) 611-5825 or fill out a contact form, so we can get back to you. 

Data Driven Decision Making in Manufacturing

Data Driven Manufacturing

Data Driven Decision Making for Manufacturing

Manufacturing is all about numbers and measurements. Without both of those factors, a manufactured piece would not come out correctly and quotas would not be met. Numbers and measurements are also at the heart of Data-Driven Decision Making, and it is a method more American manufacturers can, and should, easily embrace.

Data-Driven Decision Making (DDDM) is simply the process of making operational decisions based on information that can be backed up via tangible data. Many of the big companies live the DDDM philosophy, and when you use data to make decisions about HR, logistics, marketing, and territories to expand into – why not use it for the manufacturing process?

“Big data, small data, internal, external, experimental, observational — everywhere we look, information is being captured, quantified, and used to make business decisions,” says Walter Frick of the Harvard Business Review.

“Data can come from all manner of sources, including customer surveys, business intelligence software, and third party research,” Walter continues. “One of the most important distinctions to make is between analytics and experiments. The former provides data on what is happening in a business, the latter actively tests out different approaches with different consumer or employee segments and measures the difference in response.”

Data driven manufacturing through machine monitoring is the best way to gather analytics on the performance of your shop floor, and then that shop can alter their machine utilization, schedule maintenance, and perform other administrative actions, to compensate for any measured loss in OEE.

Want more information on machine monitoring and how you can get your shop in a DDDM state of mine, contact (877) 611-5825 or get in touch with us on one of our social media channels.

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Legacy SFA Blogs – Edition 2

Legacy SFA Blogs – Edition 2

Shop Floor Automations specializes, among many things, in legacy machines on the manufacturing shop floor. In the same spirit of preservation, we present Edition 2 of our Legacy SFA Blog Series from the Shop Floor Automations blog!

shop floor automationsIn February of 2016, MoldMaking Technology published an article about our machine monitoring solutions through Scytec DataXchange. “Scytec DataXchange software from Shop Floor Automations (SFA) is a machine monitoring software that provides detailed data collection and real-time reporting on a dashboard, enabling users to instantly track productivity, and plan for increased efficiency and time savings on the shop floor.”

You can read the whole article here. The same article was also published in the March 2016 MoldMaking Technology issue on page 47.

Recently, Shop Floor Automations made a brand new hire for a new position. Amanda came on board as our Digital Marketing Coordinator (she is now simply our Marketing Coordinator) and AMT (the Association for Manufacturing Technology).

As a bit of a throwback, Advanced Manufacturing (formerly known as Manufacturing Engineering Magazine) published this piece on us in October of 2014. Patrick Waurzyniak writes “More people than ever are looking to automate their processes, said Greg Mercurio, president of Shop Floor Automations Inc. (La Mesa, CA), a reseller of Predator Software’s manufacturing data collection suite and of the cloud-based Scytec data monitoring solution. ‘Time is money, and now there’s more in-process probing and automatic collection of data,” he add. “The key is everything is done at the machine tool.’” You can Read more.

Want more information on the solutions we offer? Call us at (877) 611-5825 or chat with us on social media! 

Funny Sounding Manufacturing Terms

A meme starting with the text: "When somebody says 'Boring Bar'" followed by an image of two people bored at a bar with the text "What your friends think". The next image is a boring bar from a machine with the text "What you think".

Funny Manufacturing Words

We could all use a little laugh now and again, right? Quite a few psychologists have even studied and recommend to implement laughter in your daily routine to help with health. It’s time that those in manufacturing, from the shop floor machinist to the guy working in the corner office, learns to laugh at themselves.

Manufacturing is serious business. It is an expensive industry full of skilled workers who want the industry to regain more footing in the American economy. But come on now – there are some funny factors about our business!

We have created a comic called “Shop Floor Man Presents” to help bring this community together through humor, but why stop there? Here is a list of terms familiar to our industry that, if you think about it for a moment, sound quite funny:

DONGLE – Aside from sounding funny, a dongle is a USB with a license on it. Many consumers are likely familiar with the term “dongle” with the latest “no headphone jack in phones” movement, and CNET is having a good laugh about it, as well.

DIP SWITCH – Not something you call someone with no common sense. It’s an arrangement of switches still used on industrial equipment, even though consumer electronics have veered away from them.

FLOPPY DISK – It’s not really floppy at all, is it? The misleading name actually means that it is a flexible magnetic disk that can be removed. The disk is surrounded by hard plastic and stores crucial data on it. For the last few years, it’s been able to be replaced by USB flash drives and alike hardware devices (AHEM, which we have plenty of in different varieties).

WORM – Stands for “Write Once Read Many.” Can also catch fish, as well as a familiar term for early birds.

BRAT – It doesn’t just explain a petulant child. It can have two manufacturing meanings: “Bi-drive Recreational All Terrain” OR “Business Risk Advisory Team.

WHACK-A-MOLE – A euphemism in manufacturing that states while one problem will be solved, another one is bound to pop up. (PS – we can help your shop floor stop feeling like this, but keep reading on!)

POKA-YOKE – While it sounds like something you would do when making over-easy eggs, this is the act of making a manufacturing process fail-safe and a process in which an error cannot be made. Detecting and preventing errors in this process falls into three stages. (AKA Baka-Yoke)

funny machine shop signs

Funny signs on display in a maker’s lab

No one is perfect. Check out our Shop Floor Automations blooper reel and subscribe to our YouTube channel! We also have tutorials and other useful info there.

BISCUIT – A ceramic that was fired, but not glazed. In terms of carbs, isn’t a glazed biscuit that was baked a scone? (AKA bisque)

BMS LOAD – It’s not an insult you hurl at someone on the manufacturing shop floor. It’s the input of resource estimates, charges and committed money in an engineering program.

CATCHBALL – Not something you do with a company sports team. It’s the process of back and forth communication between different organization levels in the workplace.

YOYO – Stands for “You’re on your own”. Hopefully, when someone says this to you, you don’t have a YOLO (“you only live once”) attitude about it.

If you can use more laughter in your life, follow our manufacturing humor related accounts on Twitter and Instagram. If you have serious business regarding your shop floor, we invite you to call us at (877) 611-5825 and or fill out our contact form.

Thanks to ManufacturingTerms.com for help with explaining some of these terms!

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Halloween with Shop Floor Man

shop floor man

Halloween Shop Floor Man Comic

It’s a little late, but we wanted to make sure we got our Halloween issue of “Shop Floor Man Presents” up here on our blog. In this comic strip, we see it takes A LOT to scare Shop Floor Man (you can click the image to see the comic larger).

More about our manufacturing and machinist themed cartoon creation:

“With an eye toward a younger manufacturing audience, the company has launched a Web comic series,” says Jedd Cole of TechSpex. “With the intention of carving out a space for manufacturing-related humor on social media, especially Twitter.”

“The comic appears in two-panel stories in which the main character, Shop Floor Man, shows life with SFA’s solutions compared with exaggerated horrors he faces elsewhere,” Cole continued. “Other comics will riff on familiar trials faced by machinists everywhere, as well as other industry-related humor.”

“Shop Floor Automations (SFA) is doing its job to attract a younger manufacturing audience by working its social media channels and developing a comic strip series called Shop Floor Man Presents,” Christina M. Fuges of MoldMaking Technologywrites.

“Finally, there’s a cartoon character metalworkers can embrace,” Chris Koepfer from Production Machining writes. “He is the brainchild from a collaboration among the owner and two employees of California-based Shop Floor Automations (SFA)…the entire company contributes ideas and feedback for the comic, which makes it fun for the employees to get involved and share their shop floor experiences.”

“With a younger MFG audience on the horizon, SFA is looking to make an impact within the social media landscape, just as the company has made its mark in the shop floor automation field,” Manufacturing Tomorrow published on October 13th.

Read more about Shop Floor Man! To get solutions to make your manufacturing shop floor more productive, call (877) 611-5825! You can also fill out our contact form.

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Legacy SFA Blogs – Edition 1

shop floor automationsLegacy SFA Blogs – Edition 1

We at Shop Floor Automations know that your legacy machines are important to you. We also take the same care in preserving our past press appearances, so we welcome you to our Legacy SFA Blog Series from the Shop Floor Automations blog!

In the first edition, we invite you to look back on articles and ads in:

Manufacturing News, October 2016 – page 35 (for the West issue) – In this issue, we talk about Predator Touch HMI and why it will benefit your shop floor manufacturing needs. The machine monitoring, big button interface is a program we have been excited to share with the public the past few months, and we are glad the manufacturing publications are helping us spread the word. Read the piece from MFG News.

Modern Machine Shop, October 2016 – on page 149 (and on their website) – We got to talk further here about Predator’s Touch HMI. “The HMI is designed to provide an easier way for operators on the shop floor to interact with management and Predator Software. Shop Floor Automations can customize color coding, layouts, prompts and third-party applications.” We invite you to read more.

American Machinist, November 2016 – on their website – our new WiFi USB Connect product is featured. The post states “The device serves as an easy and economic shop floor upgrade. Data can be stored on a remote PC, or locally in the device’s memory, with the device itself providing up to 128 MB of storage.” Read more.

Speaking of Modern Machine Shop, they also published a piece on our new creation, Shop Floor Man, in early November 2016! “With an eye toward a younger manufacturing audience, the company has launched a Web comic series called ‘Shop Floor Man Presents’ with the intention of carving out a space for manufacturing-related humor on social media, especially Twitter.” Read the piece.

Want more information on our hardware, software and support solutions? Call (877) 611-5825 to tell us what is going on with your shop floor! You can also fill out a contact form.

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An Exciting Visit to Open Source Maker Labs

Several sets of safety goggles sit on a desk at Open Source Maker Labs.

Open Source Maker Labs Visit 

The future is what you make of it, and when it comes to the people who use Open Source Maker Labs (OSML), making is literally their future. The digital fabrication lab in Vista CA was the location of the latest NTMA San Diego Chapter meeting, where members learned about what OSML is up to.

The presentation began with a sample of what the kids, and adults, who visit work on. The mission statement of the makers who come in is to formulate an idea, design it, redesign it, prototype it, then polish the final version.

Some of the focuses at OSML are in metalworking, welding, 3D Printing, woodworking, electronics, and much more. Aside from the physical aspects of creating, those who create also learn how to use CAD (computer aided design) software, and how to work with coding and computers.

One of the projects they are most proud of is their involvement in the Vulcan1 rocket launch from May of this year. As a collaboration with the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) at UC San Diego, OSML’s lab was used as a resource to do a “cold flow” test of the team’s 20-foot-tall liquid-fueled rocket.

Various 3D printed models on top of a table, serving as just a few examples of what can be done with Open Source Maker Labs.The test utilized a steel-framed test rig, made by OSML’s Dan Hendricks and his daughter in a 14-hour project, to hold the object in place for a test of the rocket’s control valves and fluid systems. OSML also hosted a launch party at their lab for those who could not make it to the launch site, when Vulcan1 went airborne.

They had a few visitors for MFG Day 2016, including other businesses and a home-schooled family, which speaks to the future of the manufacturing industry. One of the members, an instructor from Kearney High School in San Diego County, reflected on how one of his former students, who is actually employed here at SFA as a technician, would have loved to come to this lab when he was growing up.

OSML is open evenings and weekends for makers of any age, with monthly membership prices varying from $60 a month to $140 a month. The lab has tools, equipment, work space, and other resources to bring their concept to life. Some of the tools available are CNC machines, 3D printers, laser cutters, a panel saw, soldering tools, a computer lab, and more. Membership includes (among access to tools) free classes, free parts and materials, project kit discounts, meet ups, free parking, free maker humor (as you can see in the photo to the left), and coffee with snacks.

See our photos from our OSML visit .

To keep OSML thriving, as you can see what they look like on a weekend in this video, they are always in need of new members. They also would love a donation of an old Haas machine and are always open to suggestions on how to further help OSML.

For more information on OSML – go to OpenSourceMakerLabs.com, like them on Facebook, and follow them on Twitter. You can also call them to ask how else you can contribute at (760) 998-1522.

Check out our NTMA San Diego Chapter page. You can also contact Shop Floor Automations, a proud NTMA associate member, by calling (877) 611-5825 or reaching us on social media.

 

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Shop Floor Man has Arrived

shop floor man

Shop Floor Man

Wow! The response to our new creation Shop Floor Man has been wild. We at Shop Floor Automations had an idea to try and represent what our customers, who work in the manufacturing industry, go through via a comic strip character. The reception is more than we hoped for.

“With an eye toward a younger manufacturing audience, the company has launched a Web comic series,” says Jedd Cole of TechSpex. “With the intention of carving out a space for manufacturing-related humor on social media, especially Twitter.”

“The comic appears in two-panel stories in which the main character, Shop Floor Man, shows life with SFA’s solutions compared with exaggerated horrors he faces elsewhere,” Cole continued. “Other comics will riff on familiar trials faced by machinists everywhere, as well as other industry-related humor.”

“Shop Floor Automations (SFA) is doing its job to attract a younger manufacturing audience by working its social media channels and developing a comic strip series called Shop Floor Man Presents,” Christina M. Fuges of MoldMaking Technology writes.

“Finally, there’s a cartoon character metalworkers can embrace,” Chris Koepfer from Production Machining writes. “He is the brainchild from a collaboration among the owner and two employees of California-based Shop Floor Automations (SFA)…the entire company contributes ideas and feedback for the comic, which makes it fun for the employees to get involved and share their shop floor experiences.”

“With a younger MFG audience on the horizon, SFA is looking to make an impact within the social media landscape, just as the company has made its mark in the shop floor automation field,” Manufacturing Tomorrow published on October 13th.

See our archive of Shop Floor Man comics! 

“This is great for social media,” Fuges of MoldMaking Technology stated. She wrote about how our Marketing Coordinator “heard how social media isn’t valuable for this line of business, but believes this could not be further from the truth.”

“Obviously, the comic serves as a marketing and promotional tool for the company. But it’s also an intriguing entrance into a sphere not many other manufacturers have explored to date, one with the potential to tap into the lived experience of younger, millennial audience,” Cole of TechSpex continues, from his piece. “In the sometimes convoluted Venn diagram of manufacturers, millennials and social media, Web comics could be a particularly effective way to bridge culture gaps and to foster community through shared experience.”

Fuges agrees with the point of view of our Marketing Coordinator in getting a younger audience into the manufacturing industry, no matter the job focus. “You have middle school kids, high school teens and college-aged young adults who we are trying to get into this industry, or people like the military veterans being trained at organizations like Workshops for Warriors. These people of these various age groups are attached to their devices and social media, and we can reach them and show them this industry is a community.”

“Laughter and humor are part of the fabric of life and enjoyed by almost everyone,” says Koepfer at Production Machining. “Shop Floor Man can demonstrate that manufacturing can be a fun industry in which to work.”

Want to see more of Shop Floor Man, or have feedback on some future adventures he can go on? Tweet SFA on Twitter at both @SFA_inc and @ShopFloorHumor. You can always call us, too, at (877) 611-5825!

 

Wondering what happened during your shift?

A screenshot of the timeline dashboard in Predator MDC machine monitoring software, showing everything a machine did during three separate shifts.

Click the image above for larger view

Production Data with Predator MDC

Break down what happened during production into visuals. There has been a cool new Predator MDC v11 Timeline View update you need to see.

If you are trying to keep pace with other shops, you are constantly trying to figure out what happened with meeting your production goals. With machine monitoring from Predator Software via MDC, you can start the dialogue with your shop floor and its managers.

Use the timeline dashboard via the Predator Machine Monitoring Client Software for a stand-up production meeting. A manager can load this onto a shop floor screen and review with the team what the machines did yesterday during second and third shifts.

Most managers are at home during these time periods, so the review meeting will most likely take place at 9 a.m. the next day. The pie charts in the Productivity Summaries will sum up the data in the Machine Timeline.

What are some new features you can expect from the latest v11.0 update to MDC?

  • Predator Touch HMI, Events Touch & DNC Touch
  • Predator MDC for Android Phones
  • Predator MDC Executive Real-time view from any browser
  • Analog and Digital Input for Legacy Machines using Predator MDC Adapter
  • Scrap Part & Downtime Pareto Charts
  • Multiple OEE reports, Dashboards & Charts
  • New Shop Floor Layout & MDC Executive options
  • Support for: Windows 2012, Windows 10, Oracle 12, Microsoft Access 2016, Microsoft Access 2013, Microsoft SQL Server 2016, Microsoft SQL Server 2014
  • New Chart Colors & Refresh options
  • New Downtime charts & Status Display Pie Charts
  • Event Trend Charts, Machine Utilization Charts, & Toolbar Buttons

There have also been lots of updates and fixes to existing features, such as My Favorites, HTML-based online Help, Measurement Dimension Wizards, and more! If you want more information, contact Shop Floor Automations on social media, or call us at (877) 611-5825.

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MFG Day 2016 Continues

mfg day

Hardinge Group hosts MFG Day 2016 event

More MFG Day 2016 Events

MFG Day 2016 itself may have passed, but there are still monthly celebrations of the American manufacturing industry going on. Our customer, the Hardinge Group in Elmira NY, held an open house on October 12th.

“We opened our doors today to participants of Manufacturing Day,” a representative said about the event on their Facebook page. “They got a sneak peek of our experience in Engineering, Automation, Robotics, and of course, our four heavy hitters – Turning, Milling, Grinding, and Workholding.”

The importance of MFG Day is to not only celebrate this industry but to pull the younger generation in to keep American manufacturing going. “We’ll be keeping an eye on these young stewards of the Manufacturing World,” Hardinge says.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, manufacturing was the industry with the highest employment in New York, where Hardinge is located, up until 1993. Manufacturing was also the dominating field providing the highest American employment rates from 1990 until the early 2000s. As of 2013, manufacturing was the provider of the most jobs only for seven States.

mfg day

Hardinge Group hosts MFG Day 2016 event

The Manufacturing Institute has said that 3.5 Million manufacturing job vacancies will need filling over the next decade due to previous workers retiring and a jobs surplus created due to business growth, but sadly, 2 Million jobs are expected to sit unfilled because of a serious skilled labor gap. With a lack of resources for school children these days who are interested in STEM careers (science, technology, engineering & math), it is crucial that current members of the manufacturing industry step in to fix this problem.

There are also current solutions happening right now to fill these jobs, such as the efforts of Workshops for Warriors to get military veterans into these jobs. There are also unconventional methods, such as Wisconsin’s Workshop for the Blind, or the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program to “place inmates in a realistic work environment…and enable them to acquire marketable skills to increase their potential for successful rehabilitation and meaningful employment upon release.”

It is definitely appreciated when companies like Hardinge open their doors for the future generation to learn more about this industry. We have also seen similar efforts from our customers at Amarillo Gear Company. We hope that these efforts will help to occupy that skills gap and keep manufacturing in America.

Read more of our MFG Day 2016 posts. Otherwise, tell us what you think via social media, or call (877) 611-5825 to share what is happening with your shop floor!