What makes a superhero special?  You guessed it, their superpower.  For real, how interesting is Superman without his X-ray vision and other abilities?  Well, imagine for a minute having access to technology that has its own superpower? That technology we are going to explore today is machine monitoring and its superpower is instant insight. 

In every manufacturing process, there are always two elements to understand; value added, and non-value added activities. Both types of activities cost time and money, but only value-added activities will yield returns. Today, the best way to capitalize on these value-added activities within your manufacturing processes and take advantage of its inherent superpower of instant insight is to use a machine monitoring system connected to “Industrial Internet of Things” ( IIoT) technology .

Pro Tip: You can take action immediately when you have the insight you need to understand where you are losing money in your manufacturing process.

Six Ways Machine Monitoring Gives You Instant Insight and Can Save You Money Today

1. Reduce Yield Loss.  Defects, operator error, and maintenance can all have a dramatic impact on your overall profitability. You can significantly reduce yield loss with activity data collection on every one of your machines. Even legacy equipment that’s 20+ years old can be fitted with modern machine monitoring tools, and it can usually be installed in less than 24 hours. 
   

2. Decrease Scrap Waste. Every plant has some degree of scrap waste, and it’s critical to analyze where your most substantial scrap costs might be. Once the root cause is determined, lean manufacturers can achieve improved levels of scrap minimization. Typically, about 80% of the problem comes from 20% of your processes. Or Innovative production processes help reduce and prevent the non-value-added time that is spent on scrap materials.
   

3. Analyze value-add steps and eliminate the unnecessary ones.  What if you could reduce what usually takes 60 minutes down to 45 minutes? You could be looking at a 25 percent decrease in labor costs, or in other words, an output increase of 25 percent.  Machine monitoring allows you to identify those unnecessary steps and streamline your operations. It requires no additional people or facilities, and you don’t need to replace legacy machines with costly new ones.
   

4. Real-time Operator feedback. Using a solution with a narrative feature in addition to raw data collection, operators can communicate equipment and production issues as they arise. With real-time operator feedback, they will more engaged in their work and be able to maximize their output in a day, all while giving you a more accurate depiction of each shift and where you are losing time. 

5. Connect to your plant from anywhere. Machine monitoring tools should be  fully connected to the internet. A plant manager can get production data from anywhere in the world delivered straight to their smartphone, tablet or computer. This inter-connectivity is key to keeping management and floor staff informed to achieve the most productive output possible.
   

6. Improve administrative functions.  Estimating, scheduling, production, shipping. Are these operations running as efficiently as they could be?  Stopping production because of scheduling errors has a considerable impact on your bottom line. Machine monitoring technology should give you a 360 degree view of your plant operations and can be integrated with supply-chain and manufacturing assets to ensure every aspect of your plant is running optimally.

Value-added manufacturing processes can be optimized and provide almost immediate cost savings by utilizing machine monitoring technology.  The instant insight gained into your overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) gives you a competitive advantage that you can use as your next superpower.