Moldmaking Operation Visibility is Enhanced Through Smart Factory Solution

For today’s competitive mold builders, evolving shop floor technology is swiftly becoming a necessity to compete amidst workforce limitations, supply chain disruptions and a global marketplace. The Scytec DataXchange machine monitoring solution, available through North American manufacturing integrator Shop Floor Automations, is one such smart factory technology. This solution helps manufacturers gain automated visibility across all collaborative and industrial robots, as well as other CNC, fabrication, assembly and legacy or manual equipment, according to the company.

By pulling data from all devices within a manufacturing cell and synthesizing it with a company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other core systems, moldmakers can identify and take informed action on the following intelligence, and much more:

• Actual setup and run times. By comparing a company’s estimates to its actuals, users are able to increase the accuracy of job costing, providing a better handle on margins and overall profitability. The visibility afforded by these actual times guarantees easier and more reliable planning and scheduling, as staffing requirements become predictable.
• Machine statuses. Uptime and downtime records and notifications to maintenance, production and management can ensure service is planned for and executed when and as needed.
• Completed quantity. Inventory of raw materials, intermediates and finished goods can be affected in real-time by machine processing, as it occurs.
• Scrap quantity. Material requirements may be altered based on the volume of actual scrap produced, adding to the dependability of planning and scheduling.
• Scrap codes. Opportunities to reduce waste may be presented through reason code analysis.