Optimize your shop floor operations and production efficiency

Larger, partially automated production companies use large amounts of data exchanged between office and production environments, as well as between production lines and stations. When it comes to products with a lot of variation - for example, with regard to dimensions, color and accessories - the data flows quickly become extremely complex. To keep things clear and workable, specialist in turnkey assembly systems Total Productivity offers the NoMuda VisualFactory shop floor control software.

It is efficient to extensively integrate the factory floor and office environments. This is because the production floor software cannot do without information from the office environment (ERP) about production planning, bills of materials and configurations, among other things. In turn, the office environment needs information from the shop floor about material consumption but also about faults and the number of rejected and approved products. The associated data streams can be complex and voluminous. To keep it manageable and workable for everyone, NoMuda developed the software 'VisualFactory'.

Jeroen van Dijk, working as a marketer at Total Productivity (exclusive representative of the software) comments: "This integration is especially important in one-piece-flow situations. These are companies that assemble to customer specifications, where the customer can often make various choices to configure the product to their liking. Sometimes it's just about color or size but in other cases the number of different versions is extremely large due to the ability to add different accessories or take advantage of other options."

Controlling operators

The trend of personalizing products has been apparent for some time and has caused problems for many companies. After all, in order to produce flexibly, it is important to have well-trained operators with a lot of experience. People who know which assembly sequence is best for which configuration, which operations to perform with which tools and fasteners, and how to go through the tests. However, it is well known that well-trained personnel with experience are not readily available, which is a danger to production and especially when there are peaks.

To deal with these situations, Total Productivity is increasingly implementing VisualFactory. Basically, this is software for digital work instructions but then so flexible and detailed that even new people can use it to automatically create error-free products. Van Dijk: "The 'smart' thing about this software is the way the various steps are run through and displayed. It is not a digitized manual where the operator has to keep clicking on the next picture to see what the next step is. In fact, the software checks each step and proceeds only when it is found to be correct. Tightening a screw with a certain torque is checked and only when the screw is correct, the software automatically moves on to the next step. All the way to the final product. The intelligence is also found in the way it indicates which component the employee should pick. This is done in part by the "pick-to-light" principle in which a beam of light indicates the component. Furthermore, the software is easy to adjust by the user and can be adjusted to the level of the operator.

In the bigger picture

Of course, VisualFactory is also capable of storing all production data and making it available to the office environment. This is important for analysis purposes, but also increasingly for the customer itself and as a backup for possible legal conflicts. Finally, the data generated on the various individual workstations can be used to optimize production planning. After all, it follows from this how fast certain tasks are performed and where a shortage or, on the contrary, a surplus of capacity can be found. In this way, work is distributed in the best possible way and all employees on an assembly line have the same amount of work to do. Van Dijk: "Be sure to check out some VisualFactory customer cases on our website, which clearly show the possibilities. Or contact us to look at your specific possibilities with us."