Machine Monitoring and ERP Integration
Enterprise Resource Planning solutions or ERP is a system to manage day-to-day business activities such as accounting, purchasing, planning, scheduling, and much more. ERP is not new to business or manufacturing. What is innovative is that we integrate the data from ERP systems with machine monitoring extending ERP data to the shop floor, as well as providing accurate machine and shop floor data to Enterprise Resource Planning software, all in real-time.
The benefit of Enterprise Resource Planning systems is their ability to tie together a variety of business processes and enable the flow and sharing of data between the processes. Extending the reach of ERP to the shop floor is essential to stay competitive; however, providing and retrieving accurate data with the shop floor is critical.
Manual entry of setup time and machine time is typically not very accurate. In addition, business definitions and shop floor definitions of a process are not always the same. For example, the definition of “cycle time” typically is different for a manufacturing engineer compared to someone in accounting.
Routings for work orders are maintained in ERP along with the ideal operation and ideal setup times. This type of data is shared in real time with the shop floor system such as Scytec DataXchange. The machine monitoring system then accurately collects data and associates it with ERP data as well as using the ERP data to manage the process on the shop floor. For example, providing visual, email, or text notifications if ideal times or build quantities are exceeded.
Without machine monitoring and ERP integration the ERP system typically receives manually entered data once, or at most, a few times per shift. The ERP data isn’t very accurate, and not real time. On the shop floor side, the machine monitoring system can report metrics such as utilization and the parts per hour being achieved. But, did you get the expected result based on what was quoted and scheduled?
ERP integration with machine monitoring ensures that the data within the Enterprise Resource Planning system is much more accurate, allowing for more appropriate quoting and scheduling. In addition, shop floor machine monitoring systems can utilize the data from ERP to provide historical and real-time feedback of how the floor is performing compared to what was planned. Operators can interact with one, easy to use touch screen interface to enter information into both the machine monitoring system and the Enterprise Resource Planning software.
To compete in the fierce business landscape today requires real-time data, advanced analytics and innovative technology. Companies must operate in the IIoT world of Industry 4.0. The benefits of incorporating machine and shop floor data with an Enterprise Resource Planning system allows you to stay ahead of the competition.