Do You Know What’s Happening on Your Plant Floor?

Today, tying the machines on your plant floor to management on the top floor for a real-time glimpse of production status isn’t just convenient—it’s critical to remain viable in a competitive market. Incorrect, untimely, or unavailable data about your plant floor can be more dangerous than no data at all. Accurate real-time data helps expose plant floor deficiencies while providing the needed data to ensure overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), quality, and more.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) on the plant floor is as critical to the viability of the business as any component in the execution of manufacturing. Relying on an ERP system to effectively automate a process not only results in a nearly perfect production process, it also frees an operator to focus on other, value added activities. Plant floor operators can leverage the ERP system to provide information for proper equipment calibration and ongoing measurements.

Settings for specific parts are automatically entered for tolerances, speed, and other critical requirements for a controlled strategy for production. The system can ensure that no machine operation is underway until settings are met. Once the plant floor machines are online, it’s easy to focus resources, eliminate waste, improve quality, and work more efficiently.

Ralco Industries realized that its inventory accuracy was only at about 50 percent, even after conducting grueling physical inventory checks. Each time the company set up a production process, operators used different methods. This resulted in lost time, inconsistent product quality, scrap, expedited shipments, and more issues.

With a manufacturing cloud ERP system, Ralco has more control over inventory management—and improved accuracy. The company has reduced inventory on hand by 15 percent and implemented best practices so there is no room for operator variation. Real-time, accurate data has also improved quality, cut scrap (by 60 percent), and reduced costs.

Integrating all manufacturing processes from the shop floor and making the data available to the top floor ensures that all facilities, regardless of location, know what’s happening on the plant floor. The cloud unites data from the plant and the entire enterprise, providing one source of truth for all users, regardless of location. With this information, you can be more competitive, efficient, and responsive to your customers’ needs.

See how to get more visibility into your plant floor operations. Download the white paper, Tying the Shop Floor to the ERP System.