Rockwell's Connected Enterprise - My Perfect Plant (1/4)
Hi, I’m a plant manager at The Widgets Factory and I used to dread coming to work in the morning. Not that I don’t enjoy my job, but troubleshooting lingering machine problems from the night before and creating production reports were two time consuming tasks that neither myself nor my staff enjoyed. I knew something had to change, but I was skeptical of the technologies and despite the morning groans, things worked and we were running a profitable business. As I look back, though, man am I glad that we did invest.
By far the worst mornings used to be when a machine was still down from the night before. Often times the PAC programs would be open with no notes as to what, if anything had been changed. Now with our new systems, when I get to my desk in the morning I have an emailed report waiting in my inbox that tells me all of the PAC changes that were made overnight, along with screenshots of the new and old code. How awesome is that? I can scroll through all the edits and even sort by user, machine, time, and action.
After checking my morning report I grab a production floor tablet and sign in. As I walk within range of the inoperative machine my tablet springs to life giving me an HMI session, a programming session, and access to our ERP system. I pull up our automated reporting tool and drag and drop some tags I want to historically trend right before the machine went down. I notice a timing discrepancy between an encoder and a proximity switch and want a closer look. Since I think the tablet is too small for programming, I log into one of the thin clients at the machine. As soon as I do, all three of my tablet sessions are transferred over to a nice large 24” widescreen. Much better. I tweak some code and ask the mechanics to check the belts. Eureka! The machine is able to start up without a hitch. I can’t tell you how long that would have taken us to figure out in the past without these tools.
While one machine was down last night, the others all ran well above their targets. In the past that would have meant downtime to wait for new raw materials, but now that my operations systems talk to my enterprise systems, raw materials are ordered automatically based on real production instead of forecasted numbers. This has allowed us to run leaner with less inventory and yet still decrease downtime. My accountants are also happy because the system allows them to properly cost all production and therefore set the most reasonable market price for our products.
Some people tell me I have the plant of the future and I like to tell them I have the plant of the present. Technologies exist today for automatic data collecting, reporting, auditing, and diagnostics. We have more information to make educated decisions than ever before and the security to protect it all from malicious or benign intentions. With the new cloud based reporting systems I can now securely check the status of my entire plant from my cell phone anywhere at any time.
My buddy Bob owns a business across the street, but he hasn’t leveraged any of the new technologies we have over the last two years. I see it wearing on him like it did on me two years ago. I like the guy, but with the growing competitiveness of the market space, I can’t see him staying in business much longer.
Looking for more information on how Rockwell Automation’s Connected Enterprise can help your business? All you have to do is contact your account manager and tell them that you are ready for the perfect plant! Or fill out our Solutions Request form and we will get back to you!
By the way, here's a nice document to get you thinking about the Connected Enterprise: