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Read the approach to machine monitoring software taken by Senior Aerospace AMT.
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Smart Manufacturing Takes Flight with Aerospace Machine Monitoring

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 single clients. For Senior Aerospace AMT, a leading manufacturer of commercial and aerospace parts, its single customer of the company – albeit, one of the largest aerospace companies in the world – made up approximately 90 percent of AMT’s business. The company spun this indicator into an opportunity to fine-tune its machining operations.

Aviation machine monitoring

While piloting the DataXchange machine monitoring solution, the AMT team decided to leverage the existing PCs at each work center so there wasn’t a need to train operators on new hardware in addition to new software.

Tom Anderson, AMT Machine Process Engineer, explained, “We wanted to know, how much time are machines broken down? Which machines need to be replaced over others, and when? At the same time, we wanted to get a full sense of our capacity.” Once this visibility was gained, he figured, there would be a better chance to determine potential improvements to cost effectiveness and quality in an effort to retain current business and attract new prospects.

“It was really easy, out-of-the-box. You can collect infinite types of data.”

AMT partnered with Shop Floor Automations (SFA), a California-based provider of hardware, software and technical expertise, for options. The DataXchange aerospace machine monitoring solution, by Scytec Consulting, was recommended after an evaluation of AMT’s requirements. “We wanted to walk before we run,” he noted, sparking a pilot approach to the implementation of the software. Six machines, some with tablets or bar code scanners, were connected by the IT team at AMT during the first phase of the pilot.

The Team Takes Off

“It was really easy, out-of-the-box,” he says. The tools and documentation available through the platform were enough for Anderson and his team to start setting up the program in-house. “You can collect infinite types of data, so we looked to simplify above all else.” For example, machine statuses were set up to indicate the lack of an operator.

Initially the team input 15-20 downtime options to select from; those options were then narrowed to 8-9 with a reason code and the ability to add a note for further information. At the same time, the team decided to leverage the existing PCs at each work center so there wasn’t a need to train operators on new hardware in addition to the DataXchange software.

Learn more about the approach AMT took with its aerospace machine monitoring software by accessing the full success story now.

Equipment monitoring ERP - Scytec DataXchange
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Integrating Equipment Data with ERP for Bigger Business Benefits

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.

 

Equipment monitoring ERP - Scytec DataXchange

Inefficient maintenance processes, like manual data collection, contribute to unplanned downtime and costs, according to Forbes.

For companies with strict quality standards and challenging customer expectations, the cost of a nonconformance, rework or even rejection can be enough to draw the attention of executives due to the shipping, additional labor, materials and reallocated machine time required to correct the defective product. This says nothing of the damage to the customer relationship and the impact on their own tight schedule. It behooves manufacturers, then, to ensure shop floor equipment is always performing optimally with minimal downtime.

The Move Past Manual Downtime Tracking

To do so effectively, manufacturing machinery must be continuously monitored. Today’s smart factory showcases plants with modern machine monitoring software, like Scytec DataXchange, which replaces previous steps of manually tracking, handwriting or physically keying in cycle times, set up times, downtimes, costs and reason codes, and then piecing this data together to understand trends, performance and opportunities for improved efficiency. While these manual processes were time- and labor-intensive to compile, report and analyze, they were also often riddled with inaccuracies, in addition to the time delays that further hinder a company’s ability to react quickly. In fact, Forbes specifically cites these types of inefficient maintenance processes as bad attributes that contribute to unplanned downtime and costs.

Bigger Business Benefits

The utilization of equipment monitoring software becomes crucial, therefore, for businesses working towards the goal “to prolong production performance until it reaches a point that the machine requires complete replacement due to wear and tear or technology change, if justified,” writes Salman Taghizadegan in Essentials of Lean Six Sigma. But the benefits of equipment monitoring systems extend past precise predictive maintenance. Through Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) integration, ideal machine monitoring software can capture and populate data, like these, for an even bigger business-wide impact:

  • Actual set-up and run times. By comparing your estimates to your actuals, you’ll increase the accuracy of your job costing to give you a better handle on your margins and overall profitability. The visibility afforded by these actual times will allow for easier and more reliable planning and scheduling, as staffing requirements become predictable.
  • Machine statuses. Uptime and downtime records and notifications to maintenance, production and management can ensure service is planned for and executed when – and exactly – as needed.
  • Completed quantity. Inventory of raw materials, intermediates and finished goods can be affected in real-time by machine processing, as it occurs.
  • Scrap quantity. Material requirements may be altered based on the volume of actual scrap produced, adding to the dependability of planning and scheduling.
  • Scrap codes. Opportunities to reduce waste may be presented through reason code analysis.

Integrate Machine Monitoring with ERP

While machine monitoring software offers a lot towards optimal maintenance management, its integration with ERP is the lift that expands the effect of equipment data across the enterprise to grant clearer visibility into production, inventory, accounting, lean, planning, scheduling – and yes, maintenance – to help drive greater consistency into each process for more effective decision-making. Learn more about connecting your ERP with machine monitoring software by contacting a Shop Floor Automations representative today.

Work Offset Monitoring with DataXchange Machine Monitoring Software
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The Equipment Monitoring Impact on Process

For many companies, monitoring machines can be limited to simply tracking planned and unplanned downtime for maintenance operations. The real-time capture of downtime data can produce valuable trends to help prioritize and implement corrective action to prevent additional equipment failures, as an example shared by Reliable Plant magazine.

Others may include monitoring for production purposes, such as tracking cycle times. There is plenty of intelligence to be gleaned in these areas from equipment monitoring solutions, such as Scytec DataXchange, like machine utilization to determine if there is greater capacity available to take advantage of increased demand. But one manufacturer took its usage of DataXchange a step further to impact process.

The QC impact from equipment monitoring

One manufacturer of structural parts for jet OEMs sought to take their machine monitoring instance beyond downtime and production purposes to better understand what work offset was delivering low-quality parts.

A Use Case For Work Offset Monitoring

With FANUC CNCs, the external work offset (work coordinate system number zero) lets you shift the point of reference for fixture offset entries from the machine’s home position to a more logical position, writes Modern Machine Shop. Senior Aerospace AMT, a manufacturer of structural parts for jet Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), sought to understand what work offset was delivering low-quality parts. Leveraging the power of DataXchange, the company started tracking probing adjustments made to work offsets to begin building a historical reference. This way, they reasoned, engineers can check what change to the offset may have had on a nonconforming part.

The Quality Effect

Even more so, by pulling in tool numbers, tool life, maximum tool life, the maximum load, average load and average and maximum vibration – and applying custom variables to know how far and how long that tool is running – the team can better understand the result if something was changed to see if it made the output better, or if the machine is running less or more. The company even integrates manufacturing data from machinery that provides load percentage of spindle monitoring data from DataXchange. And the manufacturer continues to expand its usage of the system, including setting a monthly cadence to verify part standards in ERP to actual cycle times, to meet the needs of its C-suite. “When it comes to responding to customer feedback for feature enhancements and fixes, I’ve not worked with a software company that is easier to work with than Scytec,” says Tom Anderson, Senior Process Engineer at Senior Aerospace AMT.

Free SFA Needs Assessment

Find out how you can monitor downtime, production and work offsets for maximum impact on your manufacturing operations with DataXchange and Shop Floor Automations (SFA). Reach out to an SFA equipment monitoring expert today for a free needs assessment to compare your current state to what Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and other KPIs you’d like your organization to achieve in the near term.