Why Invest in Smart Factory Machine Monitoring Solutions?
Growth spurred by recovery from COVID-19, skilled labor and material shortages, and more is fueling interest in smart factory practices. Machine monitoring may be the answer for your manufacturing operations.
Are you looking to take on or contribute to your smart factory initiatives? Are you wondering if you should use smart factory monitoring services?
With skilled labor shortages being so common, there’s never been a better time to invest in smart factory practices. Unplanned downtime can lead to many issues – decreases in efficiency and utilization, missed shipments and delays, customer dissatisfaction and more. Without being able to reduce or eliminate unplanned downtime, your plant will suffer.
According to Aberdeen Research, industrial manufacturers lose an estimated $50 billion every year due to unplanned downtime. It’s estimated that unplanned downtime can cost industrial plants between $10,000 and $260,000 PER HOUR.
The Costs of Downtime in Manufacturing
Machine downtime is a major source of reduced efficiency in manufacturing. Many companies underestimate machine downtime and don’t – or can’t – make correct calculations as a result.
Unplanned downtime is particularly detrimental. Unplanned downtime occurs for many reasons and can slow down operations. Unfortunately, overhead costs won’t change.
Machine downtime is a major source of reduced efficiency in manufacturing. Many companies underestimate machine downtime and don’t – or can’t – make correct calculations as a result. Machine monitoring solutions can offer a cost-effective approach to achieving smart factory goals.
Neglecting to care for machines can lead to high costs and wasted resources. By eliminating or drastically reducing unplanned downtime, you’ll streamline operations and decrease costs.
Machine monitoring solutions can be a powerful tool to add intelligence to your manufacturing environment.
Benefits of Downtime Monitoring Services
Equipment monitoring services can be the key to unlocking increased productivity, capacity and much more for manufacturers and job shops. Here are four reasons why.
1. Identify Bottlenecks
Once equipment downtime is being monitored, managers and supervisors will always know when a machine is down. With this level of visibility, unplanned events can be investigated for analysis while planned downtime can be scheduled during non-peak times. Was the unplanned downtime a result of an operator error? Did a machine malfunction due to excessive job changeover? By assigning reason codes to machine monitoring alerts, you can develop predictive analysis over time.
2. Make Better Operational Decisions
By receiving data from factory machines, you can also make better decisions. You’ll have a greater grip on capacity availability. You’ll be able to quote jobs more accurately. You can make better choices when hiring and training employees.
You’ll also know when to alter predictive and preventive maintenance plans. The data you’ll get can help you determine whether to maintain, fix, or replace a machine.
3. Empower Employees
When machine data is collected over time, employers can share the data with employees to increase transparency so everyone, as a team, can work towards a common goal of optimizing machine output.
Employees will feel more empowered. Machinery will be better utilized. Your plant operations will no longer rely on tribal knowledge and guesswork, but on real-time machine monitoring data to make well-informed decisions.
4. Increase Efficiency
With the assignment and tracking of real-time alerts, you’re then afforded the ability to focus on cycle time reduction in an automated fashion. Get a clear understanding of your idle times, setup and log times to reduce extra steps, non-value added time and other inefficiencies. What’s more, you can take a systemic approach to pursuing high-priority wastes and making a solid impact to your lean efforts.
Using Smart Factory Monitoring Services to Improve Operations
If you want to streamline your manufacturing operations, consider the smart factory solution of machine monitoring. Machine monitoring solutions can have a big impact on your factory’s short-term and long-term success, making it a compelling investment as market demand opportunities remain on the horizon.
Are you ready to start using machine monitoring software? Contact us today to learn more about what we can do for you.