The path of the data takes from the shop floor to the manufacturing execution system should be planned and executed with great care.
It seems everywhere you turn, someone is championing how data will transform anything. This is certainly true in the manufacturing world. We’re certain manufacturers absolutely understand the premise – as manufacturing was data-driven before there were computers.
What many firms feel right after hearing about digital transformation, IIoT benefits or other data-first themes is the nebulousness of actually getting all that data from what happens on the shop floor. There’s no USB cord that a manager could just plug into their laptop to get the firehose of production data they need.
More often than not, the production process encompasses an array of systems to get the job done. Some of these do have ethernet or a USB port to use, others could, many never had connectivity or even digital reporting. Then there’s all the human-based operations that make getting data even more murky than just not having sensors.
To get the benefits of Industry 4.0, it's not just a piece of software that’s needed. An entire integrated network needs to be built to connect the shop floor and get it to automatically report the needed data. But first, it’s planning what needs to be reported and understanding what value managers need to pull from that data.
While we make Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), we also understand that making it an effective part of shop floor management requires much more than some install disks. It requires the aforementioned planning with people who understand what can be done and how to combine that with what a specific manufacturer would need. It also requires integrators who can go out onto the floor and connect the dots from real world machines like HMCs, presses, labelers or spool winders to the MES system properly.
At ISE and Paper-Less we’ve set the stage for great success with our manufacturing customers. We do this by being a firm who’s provided not only a reliable MES system to collect and analyze production data, but also the integration services needed to connect the shop floor to the software.
Our over 30 years of experience providing both product and integration services has proven to us and our clients that you absolutely need both software experience as well as manufacturing systems experience to lay the foundation to Industry 4.0 capabilities. But first you need a good plan and someone with experience you can trust to help through the process. This is especially true for small and mid-sized manufacturers who don’t have the luxury of a large manufacturing engineering and IT footprint.
If you’re considering taking the digital transformation path, contact us today. Our highly skilled consultants can be your trusted resource in the process. We have decades of experience helping firms connect the dots from shop floor processes to real time data analytics MES systems like MV2 can provide.
