In Part 4, we examined the numerous reasons why MES is vital to any company interested in operating as a coordinated entity by providing the bidirectional control links between its production and business processes. Now we look at why enterprise manufacturing intelligence (EMI) is equally crucial to the welfare of companies by providing them the actionable intelligence they need to run like well-oiled machines.
Introduction
Enterprise manufacturing intelligence software is a suite of applications that integrates a company’s manufacturing data from multiple sources to aid in reporting, analysis, visual summaries and passing data between enterprise-level and plant-floor systems. The combined data can be given a new structure and put into context to make locating information easier.
As its name implies, EMI software provides real-time information about manufacturing processes throughout the enterprise. This enterprise-wide perspective is of particular importance to manufacturing and mining companies that are geographically dispersed and who may be operating a disparate variety of automation systems and/or MES solutions.
EMI software helps businesses optimise the performance of production processes and maximise yields through statistical and rule-based analyses. EMI aggregates and evaluates production data, provides role-based visualisation and helps personnel reduce production waste. EMI also enables users to improve manufacturing processes, identify best practices, react to exceptions and events and anticipate potential problems before they affect parameters such as quality, yield or cost.
So, who would not want EMI? Not many people it seems. Although a relatively new concept, EMI has received an enthusiastic welcome from mining, manufacturing and utility companies because it helps them visualise their businesses in ways they have been looking forward to for decades.
Why production professionals are buying EMI solutions
EMI is not only for the élite – it has been proved to deliver measurable ROI for any manufacturer and with today’s versatile technologies, which virtually ensure that existing investments are protected through the continued use of current assets, EMI is making sense to even the smallest manufacturers.
To better understand EMI’s contribution, it is useful to check the benefits it provides along three main areas of influence: performance management, process analysis and synchronisation with other enterprise initiatives on the shop floor, the top floor and with the supply chain:
Performance management
Delivery of actionable intelligence through dashboards and workflows – too much information at any one time can be as unhelpful as too little. Studies show that any more than four key parameters at once are confusing. For example, you run your car by looking at four main dashboard indicators – speed, RPM, temperature and fuel. Anything else would contribute little to the current objective of getting to point B (including GPS which would be of little help without fuel, your being arrested for speeding or a melted engine). If something goes wrong with any of these parameters, you can take instant corrective action – hence the term ‘actionable intelligence’. The same is true of production information (see Figure 1). What is more, these dashboards can be shared globally so that everyone has a good understanding of their personal contribution.
Continuous improvement – although EMI is unable to automatically administer corrective action for production processes, it does supply the information for management and staff to do the necessary. To that end, it resembles another familiar mechanism: scada. As we said that MES could be considered as ‘scada for operations’, we could refer to EMI as ‘scada for production’. The scada theme is natural and obvious. All processes need to be monitored and either left alone if they are meeting performance specifications or changed if they are not. The change can range from a simple adjustment to a re-design of the process. One thing is sure – non-performing processes cannot be left alone and EMI provides the necessary information to change them for the better in a continuous cycle of improvement.
Meeting customer expectations – customers have the same view of you as you have of your suppliers. You expect suppliers to deliver as promised and they know that if they want to retain you as a customer, they have to meet your expectations. Your customers are no different because they have customers of their own. Making sure that your product is ‘available as promised’ is one of the cornerstones of your company and uncertainty as to current production capability does nothing to help you close any sale or to answer customer queries with confidence. EMI reveals the true picture your customers will know that you have a grip on the situation.
Visibility into plant operations – incredibly, the wealth-creating processes of mining and manufacturing companies have, until fairly recently, been treated as ‘black boxes’ by the owners. This all changed when they realised that their money was not created on balance sheets but on the shop floor. Suddenly, visibility into plant operations became top of the agenda. But this was easier said than done because of the disjointed and insular aspect of the information available from production technologies. Scada historians were the first to go beyond their mandate and this formed an excellent source for MES solutions which bridged the gap to ERP. All these developments took years but now EMI is able to bring them all together for a comprehensive view of the enterprise’s actual performance in real-time.
This is particularly important to distributed companies who want a unified picture of their operations. A car manufacturer might want to compare notes between various manufacturing facilities or a power utility company might want to coordinate national power distribution more efficiently. These are applications that need to transcend disparate sources and collate information in the proper context for effective decision support.
Process analysis
EMI uses a number of technologies for process analysis:
Statistical process/quality control (SPC/SQC) – SPC is the application of statistical methods to the monitoring and control of a process to ensure that it operates at its full potential to produce products that conform to specifications. Under SPC, a process behaves predictably to produce as much conforming product as possible with the least possible waste. While SPC has been applied most frequently to controlling manufacturing lines, it applies equally well to any process with a measurable output. Key tools in SPC are control charts, a focus on continuous improvement and designed experiments.
Much of the power of SPC lies in the ability to examine a process and the sources of variation in that process using tools that give weight to objective analysis over subjective opinions and that allow the strength of each source to be determined numerically. Process trends and variations in the process that may affect the quality of the end product or service can be detected and corrected, thus reducing waste as well as the likelihood that problems will be passed on to the customer. With its emphasis on early detection and prevention of problems, SPC has a distinct advantage over other quality methods (eg, inspection), that apply resources to detecting and correcting problems only after they have occurred.
In addition to reducing waste, SPC can lead to a reduction in production time. This is partially due to a diminished likelihood that the final product will have to be reworked, but it may also result from using SPC data to identify bottlenecks, wait times and other sources of delays within the process. Process cycle time reductions coupled with improvements in yield have made SPC a valuable tool from both a cost reduction and a customer satisfaction standpoint.
So, some the benefits of SPC include:
* Waste reduction.
* Reduced rework.
* Improved product quality.
* Reduced production time.
* Reduced process cycle time.
* Identification of bottlenecks, wait times and other delays.
* Identification of process trends.
* Yield improvements.
Root cause analysis – the practice of root cause analysis is based on the belief that problems are best solved by attempting to correct or eliminate root causes, as opposed to merely addressing the immediately obvious symptoms. By directing corrective measures at root causes, it is hoped that the likelihood of problem recurrence will be minimised. However, it is recognised that complete prevention of recurrence by a single intervention is not always possible. So root cause analysis is often considered to be an iterative process and is frequently viewed as a tool of continuous improvement.
Synchronisation
For the information that EMI delivers to be valuably actionable, it not only has to be in context but also in synch with the shop floor, the top floor and the supply chain.
The shop floor can look forward to reduced manual data entry (EMI gets its information from as many sources as possible automatically), improved accuracy (less human error) and reduced cycle times due to process improvements.
The top floor’s ERP system will have a simplified user interface with a new audience and will be able to report on reduced inventories. It will also be fully aware of the latest maintenance and quality issues but perhaps even more important, it will have real figures on which to base actual product costs.
Through greatly improved supply chain visibility, EMI provides accelerated supply chain cooperation and performance resulting in improved customer service. Depending on you, your customers could view your production to check on their orders while suppliers could check on your future needs and gear themselves up accordingly.
Conclusion
The above falls short of the full list of EMI benefits but the goal of EMI should be clearer. Informed decisions cannot be made without all the relevant facts. ‘All’ the facts means that they have to be collected from any and all sources (most of which will be incompatible with one another) and ‘relevant’ means that they have to be collated and reported in context of the conditions under which they were collected and have to provide actionable intelligence to the inquirer.
That is quite a tall order. The industry has been trying to do just that for half a century and it is only now, with the right mixture of international standards, open software, domain understanding, technology and knowledgeable solution suppliers that it can all come together. No more snake oil – this is the real stuff.
Perhaps we should make one last point. What is the role of management? Is it to make decisions? Well, that is one of the responsibilities of a manager who probably earned the position by virtue of his/her knowledge and experience. But once the decisions have been made, then what? Is a manager’s role to put out fires? It goes with the territory, but what happens after the fires are put out? Any manager who is making decisions and putting out fires full time is, let us face it, in charge of chaos. So what is a manager’s real job? It is to monitor and guide the processes in his/her care to make sure they are doing what they should be doing but most importantly, it is to incrementally and continuously improve them. Because if they are running better, less decisions have to be made and less fires have to be put out leaving more time for ... more improvement! And there is hardly a better tool available than EMI to help managers do just that.
Acknowledgement: Some of the material in this article, particularly the definitions, is sourced from Wikipedia.
In Part 6, we will examine what to look for when commissioning MES and EMI solutions and how implementations should be conducted to ensure value realisation and to minimise risks.
For more information contact Ugan Maistry, EOH Mining and Manufacturing, +27 (0)11 607 8142, [email protected], www.eoh.co.za
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