3 reasons metals businesses should consider starting their connected manufacturing journey
1. Increase visibility with automated, timely insights
Do you know what is causing the most downtime in your manufacturing process?
If the current process is entirely manual, important data is likely missing, making it difficult to know what is causing production interruptions and even harder to resolve the problems causing the downtime.
With the ability to access real-time reporting on outages, metals businesses can track data directly from machinery and receive insights and analytics specific to the root cause. Rather than seeing bits and pieces, metals plant managers can use automated dashboards to get a clear picture of what is causing planned or unplanned downtime – and have enough visibility to make decisions about how to reduce it.
In addition to monitoring outages, plant managers can remotely see the amount of power machines are consuming, how fast machines are running, and other key concerns, as alerts are sent directly to their email or phone. This means managers can spend less time on the production floor and more time focusing on strategic oversight and important decision-making.
2. Make production decisions based on accurate data
How confident are you that your business decisions are based on the most up-to-date information?
Another downside to legacy or manual data entry is in its accuracy. People are known to make mistakes when performing time-consuming, repetitive tasks. These mistakes can add costs to job setup, production, and more.
Automated production reporting can increase accuracy and efficiency. Managers at all levels can send and receive production data from an enterprise resource planning system and base maintenance plans on actual machine utilization. Additionally, businesses can anticipate potential breakdowns before they happen using machine learning and artificial intelligence with predictive maintenance models.
Metals businesses could save costs by decreasing the repetition and continual quality checks that come from manual reporting. Additionally, human error could be greatly reduced with intelligent maintenance plans based on machine utilization. This real-time data takes the guesswork out of an operator’s or manager’s day-to-day decisions and bridges the gap between business data systems and the processes happening on the shop floor.
3. Gain clarity to add long-term value
Does it ever feel like success is hard to measure?
Leaders in one area of the business might be worrying about production and accuracy, while those in another are wondering how to increase efficiency and stay within budget. When multiple elements of a metals business are working toward separate benchmarks, it’s hard to measure success.
With the integration that connected manufacturing allows, production data and business data are intertwined to produce financial data that is based on real production.
Connected manufacturing is able to bring data from different worlds together, in one place. Full transparency from increased data, state-of-the-art features, and access across the organization allows leaders to make decisions that can affect the bottom line well into the future.
