Dasarathi G V
Director in Leanworx
Dasarathi has extensive experience in CNC programming, tooling, and managing shop floors. His expertise extends to the architecture, testing, and support of CAD/CAM, DNC, and Industry 4.0 systems.
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Production efficiency software
Improvement in production efficiency results in the following benefits:
- More production with the same machines, or same production with fewer machines.
- Reduced CapEx on new machines as orders increase.
- Culture change and focus on producing efficiently instead of merely producing to targets.
- Improved profits.
Production efficiency software provides decision makers at various levels in the shop floor with accurate data straight from machines, enabling them to take timely and correct decisions. These decisions result in:
- Reducing machine downtime.
- Reducing part rejections.
- Reducing cycle times.
- Improving skill levels of personnel
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How Leanworx tracks production efficiency
To improve production efficiency, you need to reduce waste of capacity caused by machine downtime, part rejections, poor skills and poor coordination between departments. You need to measure these waste, analyze the various causes, and take action to reduce them. Action requires timely and accurate data on the quantum and reasons for waste. This is what Leanworx does.
Track and report OEE
At the macro level, Leanworx tracks and reports the OEE, Overall Equipment Effectiveness. This is the impact of a low OEE on production and profitability:
- If you are a contract manufacturer, your prices are higher than they can be, causing loss of orders.
- You can produce far more with the same machines.
- CapEx on machines is higher than it should be.
- The return on investment (ROI) is low.
- Running cost (power, consumables, salaries, etc.) is higher than it can be.
Provide answers to questions on your productivity factors
Leanworx gives you answers to various queries:
- Are parts produced to standard cycle times, or are they taking less or more time ?
- Are standard cycle times for various parts and operations correct, or do they need to be revised ?
- What is the duration of each downtime, and how many incidents occurred ?
- What are the key reasons for downtimes, and which ones need attention ?
- What is the part rejection percentage, and which are the main causes of rejections ?
- What is the performance of various operators ?
- Do they need any training to improve skills, and how can I incentivize good operators ?
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Enable you to implement short term strategies to increase production capacity
Short term strategies are the ones that will give you results in a few weeks and generally no investment. These typically account for 30% of the total downtime.
Here are some examples.
Reduce downtime at shift change
This is caused by production starting late at the start of the shift and stopping early at the end of the shift. In most shop floors this adds up to 30 minutes to an hour, and in a shift of 8 hours 1 hour is 12% of the available time.
Leanworx measures this downtime and has special reports for it. To reduce this downtime, just print the report for all machines for the previous day and put it up on the notice board. The problem will stop in just a couple of weeks.
Delay in attending to machine downtimes
When there is a machine downtime for reasons like breakdown, no tool, no raw material, process clarification, etc., the operator goes in search of the supervisor to report the issue. The supervisor then comes to the machine, studies the problem, then goes to the concerned person (in tooling, methods, maintenance, etc.) and reports it.
That person in turn takes action after some time, and so on. The whole data and action chain is a time consuming one.
Leanworx drastically cuts this time to a few minutes. It sends an alert to the concerned people on their mobile phone directly, eliminating the human data chain.
E.g., When there is a machine breakdown, the operator goes in search of the supervisor to report the issue. The supervisor then goes to the maintenance department to report.
This is the ‘time to report’. Maintenance personnel arrive at the machine after a further delay. The total time between occurrence of breakdown to attending to it can be 30 minutes or more.
Enable you to implement long term strategies to increase production capacity
Long term strategies need a few months to fix, and generally require some investment. These typically account for 70% of the total downtime. Leanworx can quantify each of these downtimes and enable you to focus on the key ones. Here are some examples.
Process-related downtimes
E.g., setup, first-part inspection, setup, tool replacement. These are downtimes that are a necessary part of the process but can be reduced with better fixturing, modular tooling, etc.
Machine Breakdowns
Leanworx can help in reducing the number of breakdowns as well as the time to repair in each breakdown. Leanworx has Andon boards and mobile phone alerts that instantly inform people of breakdowns.
It has automatic ticket creation, opening and closing. It tracks time to attend and time to repair, and reports trends of mean time to attend (MTTA), mean time to repair (MTTR) and mean time between failures (MTBF). It has scheduling for preventive maintenance, both time based and usage based. It has autonomous maintenance, with operator-prompting for tasks to be completed.
No raw material
Leanworx mobile alerts and Andon boards show incidences of this downtime, and historical trends show the severity of the incidences. You can determine causes, and pinpoint if there is no raw material available from an upstream process or because of poor transportation between processes.
High part rejections
Leanworx reports on quality help you identify the cause of poor quality. Examples:
- Operator’s skill level is low and training needs to be imparted.
- Machine has poor process capability and needs to be changed to be repaired.
- Fixturing or tooling is poor.
Why Leanworx is a great production efficiency software
Leanworx is connected electronically to your machines and monitors them 24/7. It gives you reports on production quantity, part rejections, downtimes, OEE, and other key data on your laptop, tab or smartphone.
You get alerted to abnormal situations that require immediate attention on your mobile phone – machine breakdown, production below target, rejections above limit, etc. So you can take immediate action in crisis situations, and analyze historical reports to improve systems in the long term.
Production benefits seen by Leanworx users
OEE in HMLV (high mix low volume) manufacture is typically 40-50%. In mass production it is typically 60-70%. Leanworx users have improved OEE by 20-25% in as little as 3 months.
These are the benefits seen:
- More production with the same machines, or same production with fewer machines.
- Reduced CapEx on new machines as orders increase.
- Culture change and focus on producing efficiently instead of merely producing to targets.
- Improved profits.
- Reduced machine downtime.
- Reduced part rejections.
- Reduced cycle times.
- Better work ethics
- Better retention of personnel because of incentivization.
Increase your profits automatically. Use Leanworx to get accurate and instant data 24/7.
