ShiftWorx

Remote Factory Floor Visibility

Commentaires : Overall, the product was easy to install, customize and use to monitor and identify ways to improve productivity.

Avantages :

Especially during Covid when travel to our 4 factories was restricted, the Shiftworx software was very instrumental in allowing me to monitor the progress that our manufacturing equipment was making. The software also allows you to quickly see variances both over time and compared to similar equipment and take corrective actions if needed. The Shiftworx software and freepoint hardware allowed visibility to our oldest and newest machines including Oxy fuel flame cutters, Blanchard Grinders and CNC milling machines. We have made an overall machine efficiency improvement of 15% in the last 2 years using shiftworx to monitor the progress.

Inconvénients :

Integration into our manufacturing processes was fairly easy. and we have moved the hardware to new machines when making changes and the software was easy to make custom reports.

Makes a difference right away

Avantages :

This simple to use software drives performance on the shopfloor right away. It allows for simple metrics that drive bottom line results. I saw immediate changes to how our machinists decided to process jobs as they got visual feedback of the importance of spindle uptime. At a glance I can see what has happened in the last 24 hours and understand our performance - and so can everyone else in the company.

Inconvénients :

Sometimes accountability can be threatening. Care needs to be taken when rolling out this software to keep the tone positive. This risk exists with all products in this space and Freepoint does a great job of presenting the data in a positive way. They help drive engagement to overcome this potential risk.

Shiftworx - Machine Monitoring software for KPI Tracking. Good Idea - Hard to roll out.

Commentaires : We wanted to reduce idle time due to SETUPS and WAITING (for information, materials etc)
We started to collect the data for baseline and then set goals to conitnuously improve. The daily reports were so flawed due to the apathetic machinists we soon gave up.
The software is fine.

Avantages :

Easy to setup and and install the hardware and software. Had few outages. The concept of tracking machine metrics is not new, made sense for the management and production staff to use a cloud based system rather than paper reports.

Inconvénients :

*Note we stopped using this over 2 years ago, I assume progress has been made since.. The fundamental flaw in this concept is it requires production staff to immediately manually log in and select reason codes for inactivity. If they do not then the data is inaccurate. We were unable to coax staff to do this, so we did not ever get the value from it. I would only implement this type of software if: a) You only need to monitor run time vs idle/off time and do not care about "Reasons" b) or The 'Reasons" are derived automatically from the machines Status Indicator or Controller. Machine warm up, looks like RUNNING, so operators can game the system unless you invest in additional hardware, which is also not infallible. The reports were hard to customise. Hosted in another time zone, and this caused issues with reports etc.

Shiftworx Review

Commentaires : Overall I am satisfied with Shiftworx. We using the Lite version and hope that in the future we can expand to have more capability.

Avantages :

Ability to effectively display production information real time and quickly identify/correct issues as they arise. Also really like the "Time Shift" functionality that has been brought back from previous versions.

Inconvénients :

When using the same KPI in multiple layouts they are not linked and therefore takes time to update the information multiple times. That's all I can think of at this time.

Shift work

Commentaires : Collecting all data from the operators like downtime or real time spindle run . Which could help us with scheduling jobs or meeting customer satisfaction .

Avantages :

The product is very easy to use , the best thing I liked about the product is that I can monitor all the spindle time on every machine from the cottage or from the office at work .

Inconvénients :

Some features I would like to add are scheduling jobs specifically to a machine / operator with real time data .