Downtime analysing helps minimise stoppages and improve ROI

Maintenance, Test & Measurement, Calibration

Calibration equipment & service suppliers

Electrical test equipment suppliers

Physical/mechanical test equipment suppliers

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December 2001 Maintenance, Test & Measurement, Calibration

Productivity and efficiency are directly related to the reliability of equipment and the skill of operators. Downtimes due to such causes as equipment failures, operator inefficiency or general maintenance issues adversely affect profitability, production schedules and client satisfaction.

DT Analyst is a scalable solution that is designed to provide insight into the events that cause production systems or their components to stop functioning. Armed with detail cause and effect scenarios, operators, engineers and managers can quickly identify problem areas and take remedial action.

"It is well known that you cannot manage what you cannot measure," says Futuristix-Wonderware MD, Mike le Plastrier. "In order to contain or even reduce manufacturing costs, it is most important to optimise asset utilisation and the ROI of existing plant before replacing it or increasing its productive capacity with additional, costly equipment.

Until recently, there was no easy means of automatically collecting and analysing the detailed realtime and historical information that is required to continuously monitor all the causes of production losses. Now, through its automated and realtime data collection facilities, DT Analyst allows key personnel to determine the true causes of downtimes and inefficiencies by providing them with the critical information they need through web-based distribution channels, which they can access with any browser.

DT Analyst also helps operators tap into their plant's hidden capacity by reducing changeover time, maintenance problems and product flow issues before considering the addition of expensive new equipment or work shifts.

"Another important consideration," continues le Plastrier, "is the optimisation of maintenance intervals. Maintenance teams now have access to a historical track record for each piece of monitored equipment, which allows them to review equipment reliability and to provide maintenance based on necessity rather than simply the number of hours worked. This is also a valuable source of information for equipment suppliers because it gives them the hard facts they need to improve equipment reliability and specifications." The web-based DT Analyst reports are self-configuring and designed to answer the production and process questions posed by plant, production and maintenance managers as well as plant engineers, quality engineers and plant operators - all of whom have different concerns about various realtime and historical aspects of their production processes and equipment usage.

DT Analyst employs a distributed Microsoft Windows NT/ 2000 - based component architecture and does not require the presence of other applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) or Human Machine Interfaces (HMI). It can, however interface to them and is therefore a powerful and complementary addition to Wonderware's InTouch HMI scada solution.

Futuristix

(011) 723 9900

[email protected]

www.futuristix.co.za

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Maintenance, Test & Measurement, Calibration

Downtime analysing helps minimise stoppages and improve ROI

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