Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK and manufacturers in particular have been facing ever-increasing challenges. From a shortage of staff to the difficulty in obtaining essential raw materials, the manufacturing sector has had a lot to navigate. More recently, manufacturers have been hit by the rising cost of energy, and as huge consumers of energy, many are looking at innovative ways to offset and circumnavigate the high prices that currently grip the country. When simply turning machines off isn’t an option, looking at ways of being more efficient to make savings is key. One such lever manufacturers can pull is by utilising smart technology such as machine monitoring that enables almost instant improvements to productivity and offers a rapid return on investment, making the savings being sought much more accessible and achievable than you may think.
How productivity improvement software can help
Connecting manufacturing equipment to machine monitoring software such as FourJaw’s productivity improvement software improves production visibility in real-time, providing key productivity measures such as utilisation and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE).
The accurate data enables management and the machine operators to understand the current utilisation, availability, performance, and quality levels and, importantly, what the main causes of lost productivity are, by machine, cell/production line or factory. This insight can then be used to make informed decisions to improve production processes to make them more efficient and facilitate a continuous improvement culture.
A fitness tracker for your machines
Dubbed a ‘fitness tracker’ for machinery, FourJaw’s machine monitoring platform avoids the traditional costly and invasive big-ticket alternatives to deliver the right information at the right time, securely from the cloud.
The ‘plug-and-play’ technology is connected to factory equipment and uses an internet connection to provide machine analytics via a tablet device installed conveniently on (or next to) each machine in your factory. The FourJaw platform can be applied to any type of manufacturing/production equipment – regardless of brand, model or age – and installation doesn’t require someone with specialist IT knowledge. Following installation, FourJaw customer success team work alongside your key stakeholders to ensure they get the most out of the data from the very start, giving your teams the confidence to understand the data to start building a clear picture of what you need to do to improve operational efficiency.
By knowing where the bottlenecks and inefficiencies are you can eliminate them to drive a more productive and sustainable factory.
Combining productivity data with energy monitoring to drive efficiency
FourJaw 2.1 is the company’s second-generation data analytics platform, which launched in January this year. FourJaw 2.1 will include energy monitoring functionality, allowing manufacturers to see how much energy each machine uses and costs.
With the current economic challenges faced by manufacturers, it is an ideal time to take advantage of the benefits smart technology can provide manufacturers to help offset the inflationary pressures. A recent survey by MakeUK stated that 74% of manufacturers say that improving productivity is the reason behind an investment with 70% pointing to return on investment as another factor.
Using a low-cost manufacturing analytics software, like FourJaw will enable you to gain a clear understanding of your factory’s production process, ensuring that all resources – machinery, staff skills, energy, and time – are used efficiently and cost-effectively to drive productivity, gain capacity and grow profitably.
For more information please contact FourJaw on 0114 400 0158
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