In today's market conditions, competition is increasing and new actors are entering the market. In addition, daily changes in the markets lead to increased uncertainty. Therefore, the importance of speed and cost reduction in production processes and other management processes is increasing. In order to speed up processes and reduce costs, the primary requirement is to quickly collect the right data from the field, analyze it, find losses and take measures to improve them. By monitoring the effectiveness of the measures taken and taking new measures, if necessary, to reduce the impact of losses on costs. It is also one of the most important issues to make this a business culture and a daily way of life for the whole team.
One of the most important steps here is to use various tools to get accurate and fast data from the field, which will ensure that the data collected is healthy. The most important contribution of collecting data from the production site is to reveal losses. Losses in production can be defined as downtime, quality problems, and unavailability of capacity.
In normal methods without receiving signals or data from the production machine, losses are usually revealed in the light of the information provided by the operator. Daily planned production and actual production quantities are tried to be recorded manually. This kind of tracking system causes many mistakes. As a result, stocks are not kept, downtime and quality losses cannot be taken for the right reasons.
In cases where data is collected from the production machine, each stoppage can be recorded and if the signal or data received from the machine is not received from the machine, the operator can be asked to define it. In this way, stoppages can be improved with Kaizen studies by starting from the work center, workstation or stoppage where the most loss is experienced by using pareto diagrams. The same applies to quality problems. At the end of production, when production confirmation is given or if a signal is received, it can be ensured that products with quality problems are recorded with their causes. Losses can be eliminated by improving quality problems by using pareto diagrams over the collected data.
Another benefit of collecting data from the machine is that the planned production time and the actual production time can be checked to reveal differences in production times, if any. This data can be used in improvement activities and/or in revising the times defined in production recipes. For example, the production time of each part of a press machine, which is expected to produce every 10 seconds, is recorded from the production signal. Histogram diagrams can be used to determine the actual production times.
Since data is continuously collected from the machines, capacity utilization can be easily determined. This makes it easier to find out what is needed to utilize the capacity for the relevant machine. It can be determined whether the reason for not utilizing the capacity of the relevant machine is lack of orders or planning errors. The most important benefit of monitoring and improving capacity utilization is that it prevents unnecessary machine investment.
Another benefit of data collection terminals is that production confirmations are made from these terminals, making it easier to track the product produced and the materials used in a lot-based manner. In this way, traceability is ensured and when a material-related error occurs in any product, the relevant material can be easily accessed from whom the relevant material was purchased or, if it is a semi-finished product, when and by whom it was produced in which machine and in which other products it was used.