Introduction
The New Era of Paperless Shopfloor
In a typical shopfloor set-up the process followed is from production lines to quality assurance and inventory tracking. Operators in the production lines will want to know why the machine is idle or the reasons for failure. The quality team will be interested in parts rejected and the reasons for rejection.
Similarly, if the manufacturing set-up is complex then the check-list to ensure all stages are completed and comply with the guidelines is complex too.
While real-time data ensures nothing goes unnoticed or missed, data collated over the period helps in revealing insights on productivity and ideas for improving overall performance.
These are critical for tracking and improving the overall productivity, OEE and performance of the operator, machine and the entire plant when aggregated at the respective levels.
Paperless shopfloor simplifies the otherwise complex route to improve productivity. Besides the obvious benefit of going paperless that it helps the environment, paperless shopfloor can give so much more to the manufacturing unit. Like improving productivity, decreasing operating costs and boosting the shop floor to work smarter and not harder.
Problem
When the shop floor depends on paper for production to function smoothly, there is a room for error and can get very tedious.
Some of the common problems are:
- Huge impact on productivity
- Human-errors
- Time intensive
- Quality is not standardised
Solution
Paper based shop floor may seem convenient but that system does not give real-time and accurate data. With higher adoption of IoT solutions and move towards Smart factories, manufacturers are adopting paperless shopfloors to get lean, integrated and built-in sustainability within their processes. All while maintaining customer centricity.
- Product customization
- Real-time status
- Quick turnaround time
