One manufacturer with a 20-year-old CNC machine started having issues with its floppy drive corrupting and random file saves not working (and then later working). At the same time, they watched as the supply of floppy drive replacements available through eBay steadily decreased. Another manufacturer couldn’t determine how much time machines were broken down or […]
Comparing your legacy, aging equipment – your die-hard lathe or CNC milling machine – to new machinery options is easy to do. In fact, there’s a term for it: “appeal to novelty.” Equating newness to superior quality, writes educator Academy 4SC, is a logical fallacy in which something is claimed to be better simply because […]
Manufacturing integrator Shop Floor Automations (SFA) will showcase the AWS GovCloud-secure Scytec DataXchange machine monitoring solution for highly-regulated industries, including aerospace, defense and pharmaceutical, at FABTECH 2023. FABTECH is North America’s largest metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing event and will be held September 11-14 at McCormick Place in Chicago, IL. For manufacturers adhering to […]
When optimal productivity and efficiency are attained on the shop floor, why carry on equipment monitoring efforts indefinitely? When MOGAS, the leading manufacturer of severe service ball valves, began monitoring their equipment on the shop floor, they started realizing real value within the first two weeks. “I was receiving frequent machine alerts with operator notes […]
The Writing on the Wall The indicators to diversify your customer base can present themselves in many ways to a company. Value Prop, a B2B strategy consultancy, defines “customer concentration” as when companies have more than 10% of revenue reliant on a single client – or if revenue portions greater than 10% rely on multiple […]
“Show me the money!” Those iconic words from the 1996 film, Jerry Maguire, may have been once uttered to prove client-agent commitment, but they also serve as a reminder that products should continually prove value to earn your business. Cloud machine monitoring software, which utilizes Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) sensors to collect real-time data […]
Whether you have seven machines or 70 pieces of equipment on your floor, there are best practices that manufacturers across industries can apply to get the most out of your machine monitoring journey. As a top implementer and supporter of equipment monitoring software, Shop Floor Automations (SFA) has helped hundreds of manufacturers throughout North America […]
As manufacturers across North America spend time reflecting, strategizing, planning and budgeting for the year ahead, leaders are debating how to defend against disruption and strengthen their offense. It’s a great time to ask yourself: How did my department stay on track with its goals? In what ways was my team successful? Where did we […]
As manufacturers continue to seek alternatives to overcome the labor shortage, automation remains at the core of corporate strategy. Automation priorities can take the form of cobot programming, networking CNC machines for NC program transfers and machine monitoring to capture and improve upon Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), among others. Machine monitoring can be a particularly […]
Maintenance, particularly on the shop floor, involves expensive machinery – which translates into high costs for actions like repair work. These costs can represent anywhere from 15-70% of expenses, says IEEE. But maintenance costs may not even be the biggest liability. For companies with strict quality standards and challenging customer expectations, the cost of […]