Industry 4.0 is gradually revolutionizing the way manufacturing plants work, handle their routine technical operations, and deliver end products to consumers and retailers. Most manufacturers have realized that connecting their machinery to communication and computer systems can boost productivity and efficiency by providing better insights into technical operations.
However, amid the integration of machinery with computing systems in the fourth industrial revolution, there emerges the need for regular machine monitoring. Machine monitoring empowers employees, reduces downtimes, ensures production flows, maximizes resource utilization, and helps manufacturers make informed business decisions. Below we take a closer look at seven benefits of regular machine tool monitoring during this phase of the fourth industrial revolution, Industry 4.0.
1. Increasing production
Manufacturers who deploy machine tool monitoring increase their production by making decisions based on real-time data. By making data-driven decisions, manufacturers also achieve better, real-time communication between the shop floor and the management.
2. Empower employees
At CSIFLEX, we believe in the importance of engaging and empowering employees with modern technology. Automation has brought about unprecedented changes in the manufacturing front, empowering workers to do more with less. Manufacturing processes need a critical readjustment through re-humanizing to provide an environment for workers to identify productivity improvements using factual, real-time processing information.
When managers share machine data with workers, the machinists feel engaged and have a sense of accountability. At CSIFLEX, we believe that regular machine tool monitoring provides real-time, actionable insight that can be shared with manufacturing workers and employees to bolster not only their sense of accountability but proactively contribute to the endless process of improvements.
3. Transparency
Machine tool monitoring enhances dashboard and data transparency, saves huge amounts of money, increases industry competitiveness, and improves employee morale. The transparency that's achieved by regular machine tool monitoring allows businesses and companies to accurately understand problems, bringing issues to the surface much faster than before.
4. Increases machine utilization
Regular machine tool monitoring from trusted vendors increases machine utilization by a minimum of 15% to 20% in most shops by allowing customers to understand how well their investments are doing and where they should be investing further. Regular machine tool monitoring provides visibility into deep-seated machine problems, highlighting issues that would otherwise stall critical systems.
5. End-to-end improvements
Reports indicate that customers who deploy solutions in machine tool monitoring see a minimum of 15% productivity increases, they are more confident in capital expenditure and quoting decisions. Information such as performance, cycle times, number of produced parts, downtimes reasons, rejects, and reject reasons can be collected for each part operation. Access to mission-critical information enables managers to identify issues related to technical operations and evaluate the effectiveness of process improvements.
6. Reduced downtimes
Every manufacturing plant wants to run their operations as efficiently and as lean as possible, and one of the biggest obstacles is downtime. Downtime consumes crucial resources that could have been used for productivity and profitability purposes. However, when CSIFLEX machine tool monitoring system is integrated into your machinery, supervisors and managers are notified immediately the systems go down. They can investigate, identify the bottleneck, and diagnose the problem right away.
7. Making informed business decisions
Perhaps the final benefit of regular machine tool monitoring is to help you make informed business decisions based on real-time actionable data and analytics. The data you receive from your computed machinery will help you make more informed business decisions on a routine basis. Here are a few places the information will be used:
- Better decision-making on procuring more machinery
- More accurate quoting for jobs
- More informed decision-making on hiring more workers
- Useful information for training employees
CSIFLEX – One-Stop Destination
CSI/FLEX sets itself apart from market competitors because of its quality and trusted mobile solutions. CSI/FLEX is focused on building powerfully simple software that's focused on providing a human touch to data, something very few players are currently doing. Our machine monitoring software is customer deployed meaning that it’s on-premise and optionally offered as software as a service (SaaS) solution. In addition, CSIFLEX software is dynamic, encompassing regular updates and new features, thus extending real-time monitoring to your machines.