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Racing uncertainty
Whatever happened to RFID and the supposed supply chain
revolution? It’s coming along nicely, says Brian Tinham,
though certainly not on its own |
15/02/2008
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Talking the same language
Shopfloor data is increasingly being recognised as key to everything from continuous improvement to business agility. Brian Tinham looks at how to get your plant assets talking |
19/09/2007
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From shopfloor to top floor
It’s been possible for many years, but with ISA95 the lofty goal of shop floor to top floor integration is easier to attain and even more worthwhile. Antony Adshead reports |
02/05/2007
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Give your production manufacturing intelligence
Doubling the percentage of deliveries that meet their due date, cutting delivery lead times from months to weeks, and maximising production: the stuff of dreams? What’s extraordinary is not just that British manufacturers are achieving exactly this today, but that it’s largely made possible by a few wires and some PCs tht replace paper with electronic communication – especially on the shop floor |
24/01/2007
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The race for return
RFID's ultra-high frequency guise may be the answer to industry's needs for capturing faster and more complex data. But there are practical, technical and regulatory problems to solve before it takes off. |
21/01/2007
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Setting the IT agenda for your business in 2007
What’s hot? What’s not? Who cares? What matters to management teams running the various aspects of increasingly stretched and complex manufacturing companies today has nothing whatever to do with what analysts, journalists or anyone else see as ‘hot’, ‘in’ or ‘fashionable’. The primary concern is simply keeping the operation going, cutting costs and attempting to get production better and smarter – meaning faster, more efficient, more flexible and the rest of it. Brian Tinham talks to senior users in manufacturing for some serious clues |
28/11/2006
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Get your maintenance data working better for you
Inventory reductions of up to 20% in a vital but oft-neglected part of the business? Sounds too good to be true? Granted, typical savings are more likely to be in the region of 6%, but that’s still well worth having, so how can it be done? The answer is that while manufacturers have pared down raw material and work-in-progress inventories to a minimum, the spares they keep for maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) are almost always far less well managed. This is where these additional potential savings lie. |
28/11/2006
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Sowing the seeds of simulation
We’re used to seeing simulation and modelling saving small fortunes on new factories by avoiding unnecessary capital expenditure. And we also know how these techniques can be used to maximise productivity on new sites. But there is more to this: existing sites can also benefit at several levels in much the same ways for what turns out to be relatively small expenditure. |
17/11/2006
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Rexam revisits quality package
A shop floor quality system implementation recently completed at packaging giant Rexam’s 21 factories across Europe is doing much more than QA. In fact, it’s doing everything from automatically generating conformance certificates and production audit trails, to providing operator assistance and information for process improvement and business decision-making. |
16/11/2006
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Cutting the mustard the Heinz plant way
When Heinz acquired the company that became Heinz Single Service, it also acquired an entrepreneurial culture. And that shows in its ready adoption of an automated downtime analysis system that has been instrumental in reducing set-up and changeover times, cutting costs and significantly increasing productivity. |
06/10/2006
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Utilisation up and wastage slashed
Yorkshire plastics mouldings firm Fourfold Precision Mouldings’ use of Delmia Quest factory simulation software won it the coveted first prize for the huge results delivered just weeks after relocation to its new premises. Fourfold managing director Martin Wilson says that, for example, with a robot on the machines, production on each shift was increased by more than 40% while scrap levels reduced to less than 0.5%. |
04/10/2006
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BMP cuts manufacturing from months to minutes
BMP, a wholly owned subsidiary of multi-national Andrew Industries making printers and photocopiers, has been recognised for its use of Delmia manufacturing engineering software from Dassault Systèmes in developing a revolutionary production process for polyurethane components. The company’s Accrington plant, which is in operation 24/7, specialises in high-grade polyurethane blades for wiping toner from printer and photocopier machines’ transfer drums. Previously, only manual labour was able to cope with the complexity – meaning long set-up times and making production in China attractive. |
04/10/2006
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Production turnaround comes from auto-tracking
Automotive manufacturer TRW, which makes 20—30,000 electrically powered hydraulic steering motors per week mainly for other TRW sites supplying into the major automotive OEMs, achieved its success on the back of a tracking system implementation that bridged a gap between the company’s ERP system and its shop floor, enabling significant and ongoing improvement of production metrics. According to IS manager Malcolm Brown, who project managed the implementation with help from Wolf Consultancy, the initial focus was to validate TRW’s product welding process using traceability and prior step validation for a particular customer. But the benefits gained from the initial system were so good that it has now been rolled out throughout the site. |
04/10/2006
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Lean thinking flies on wireless technologies
Airbus UK’s materials management and logistics department in Filton was highly commended for its use of mobile technology to strip out vast amounts of waste and time. In fact, the company achieved full return on its IT investment within weeks of implementing the systems – and is now set to take a considerably wider wireless initiative even further. David Herbert, business improvement change agent, says this implementation was part of Airbus UK’s Route ’06 programme, looking for productivity gains and cost savings. He started with mobile technology in stock and WIP (work in progress) auditing, which used to be performed manually several times a year, taking 20 people and 100 man-hours at overtime rates. Peak Technologies supplied Symbol mobile handhelds, and the result of scanning and uploading data to the site SAP system was a transformation. |
04/10/2006
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Floored the competition with its real time data
Flooring manufacturer Amtico, which has two near identical sites in Coventry and another in Atlanta, merited our judges’ commendation for its transition from poor to excellent maintenance and production operations in one fell swoop, all on the back of a new plant data capture and analysis system. Not only did that system pay for itself in solving the very first long term plant problem it revealed, but since then it has opened the door to business understanding that no-one imagined. |
04/10/2006
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Utilisation up and wastage slashed
Yorkshire plastics mouldings firm Fourfold Precision Mouldings’ use of Delmia Quest factory simulation software won it the coveted first prize for the huge results delivered just weeks after relocation to its new premises. Fourfold managing director Martin Wilson says that, for example, with a robot on the machines, production on each shift was increased by more than 40% while scrap levels reduced to less than 0.5%. |
28/09/2006
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Labels maker finds key to standardising variety
Improved productivity – all the way from estimating and quoting to production and shipping – and greatly enhanced global business visibility from a new ERP system impressed the panel at £35m labels manufacturer Worldmark International. |
27/09/2006
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Transformed whole business with ERP
Chemicals, fibres and plastics manufacturer Acetate Products wins this year’s Best of British Manufacturing IT Award for its outstanding IT-enabled business transformation |
26/09/2006
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Corus Engineering forges lean plant
CESASC’s ERP system has been successfully configured for lean operations business-wide, despite the company serving some of the most demanding industries on the planet |
26/09/2006
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KK Finefoods grows 54% on process ERP system
KK Finefoods, one of the largest, fastest growing frozen foods manufacturers in the UK, has been highly commended for its ERP implementation from Ross Systems, which not only now manages its entire manufacturing operations, but has presided over growth and profitability that are the envy of many. |
26/09/2006
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Napp Pharmaceutical ousts best-of-breed
The argument over monolithic versus best-of-breed IT has raged for years, but the pharmaceutical sector has real experience – and doesn’t like the latter. Brian Tinham talks to Napp’s business projects head, Chris Jones, about why and what he's doing about it |
31/08/2006
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Dales seeks 75% growth from Oracle
Paper-based systems are well suited to delivering on the compliance requirement, but they’ve had their day. Brian Tinham looks at Dales Pharmaceuticals’ latest move into the digital age |
31/08/2006
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Lean success with lean systems
Adding value, cutting costs, improving service: we’ve all got to do them, and lean and IT are the best mechanisms. Brian Tinham reports from the Association for Manufacturing Excellence conference on enabling and improving lean systems |
24/08/2006
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