Big picture for production managers - consistently collect production data, calculate and visualize critical KPIs and create notifications if performance goes out of bounds
Production managers are under pressure to optimize the effectiveness and efficiency of their operations. However, this task is often difficult due to inconsistent data from different sources, which is often prepared and collected manually. Also, knowledge often gets lost since it is not documented in one place accessible to all stakeholders. The Perfomance Monitoring application allows production managers to consistently collect production data, calculate and visualize critical KPIs and create notifications if performance goes out of bounds. If problems occur, the solutions support a structured digital problem-solving process and documents issues and their solutions such that others experiencing the same problem can leverage this existing knowledge. Read in this success story about the enablement of skills and creativity of production managers to make data-based decisions.
Challenge – blind spots in data flows impede the development of optimization strategies
In order to achieve production targets, to fully utilize production, and to stay competitive as a production facility, production managers are under constant pressure to optimize the effectiveness and the efficiency of their operations. On the other hand, the knowledge, experience, and creativity for the identification of optimization potentials is usually in the heads of production managers. So, what is the blocker then? In many cases, leveraging optimization potential is inhibited by the fact that production experts are not provided with the big picture of their area and their processes. The data is inconsistent, and often needs to be compiled and adjusted from different sources, which often needs be done manually. This is not only time-consuming, but also keeps the production experts from their key tasks and responsibilities. To make matters worse, knowledge about solved impediments often gets lost since it is not documented centrally and therefore not accessible to other stakeholders in the process.
Solution – boosting efficiency on the shopfloor by providing the “big picture”
The Performance Monitoring solution developed by Siemens MindSphere allows production managers to consistently collect production data, calculate and visualize critical KPIs and create notifications if performance goes out of bounds. The system is based on a consistent data set and defined KPIs that allow production experts to understand the processes and performanceof operations. For this purpose, they can intuitively create dashboards, visualize the data of their plants, and finally draw conclusions or derive optimization measures from the defined KPIs. To ensure the big picture, the Performance Monitoring application merges data from geographically distributed data sources together in one system to identify best practices and set benchmarks. The possibility to define criteria for receiving alarms both on desktops and mobile devices when anomalies in KPIs occur, enables the production experts to know in real-time if something is not smoothly functioning in the process. If a problem occurs, the issue is solved along a structured path using the methods of Ishikawa and answering the 5-Whys. This solving process is digitally structured and mapped to document the solution for the respective problem or abnormality. Thus, the application creates sustainable resource savings, because production experts can leverage the existing knowledge for similar problems.
Key benefits – transforming into a digitalized factory while making full advantage of data
The Performance Monitoring solution is a boost for efficiency, as it enables transparency for the production managers on their production processes. Thus, optimization efforts can be implemented at an early stage, the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) can be increased and maintenance costs can be reduced. For example, a 10% increase in maintenance efficiency was achieved in a bottling plant of a soft drink manufacturer. Likewise, the use of the application led to a 20% increase in the Increase in operating efficiency in a brewery. The digitization of the root-cause analysis process enables a sustainable solution of bottlenecks and the development of a knowledge base to build efficiency in problem solving. By networking via the cloud, performance can be compred on a global level and best practices can be exchanged.