Challenge
A large flour mill was looking to modernize its operations. Specifically, they wanted better metrics around what was working for them and what wasn’t. They didn’t want to incur a lot of downtime. Many of the devices were not on ethernet networks. They were looking for a way to track shift performance and OEE metrics across their entire floor and to do so at a reasonable cost.
Solution
Plow worked with the end user to create a pilot project to see what sort of benefit could be found in adding these metrics. A single line was picked and a pilot period was selected. While this was ongoing, plans were made to communicate to several disparate systems including a wonderware, ignition and factory talk installation. By using our Lumberjack edge computer we are able to talk to different pieces of software while unifying the interfaces.
Results
The pilot was a large success. In fact during the first meeting everyone was shocked at how much improvement could be made. Now maintenance managers and floor supervisors can know about important alerts even off site. Equipment metrics are visible real time to everyone and everywhere. All their lines were brought into OnPing and unified into a single display. Making it easy to know what is happening without having to go through half a dozen different interfaces.
In addition to this effort, a modernization effort continues to this day with ongoing plans that are executed in an affordable fashion.
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