of all jobs, according to their priority. The missing
ingredient was speci c job location, which is now shown
on the departure board as a zone, but speci c location is
also visually displayed superimposed on a VR/
photographic representation of the company’s workshops
via Think Inside’s cloud platform. Every ‘quest’ to nd a
job would previously have involved an average of two
labour hours, this gure taking in all the social
interactions that occur during a journey around a factory.
It is these eliminated quests that deliver the savings of
around £10,000/month (predicated on the 125
searches of the system to locate jobs).
are now 3D-printed in plastic, with a location created for
isn’t in a storage location, it’s in use.”
Not being able to nd stuff in factories is not unusual,
either, as Digital Catapult’s Karney reveals: “We’ve now
p14)
LEAD FEATURE LOCATION TRACKING DELIVERS CRITICAL DATA
Above: The
saucer-shaped
receiver (see
also cover
photo) and an
end-of-line
fi xture with
embedded
transmitter.
There are 60
receivers and
1,000
transmitters
installed at
Dyer
Engineering
Right: One of
many jobs seen
during
Machinery’s
visit that had a
location tracker
as part of its
job paperwork
Manufacturing), Dyer Engineering had bene ted from a
funded program investigating the use of VR, 3D Scanning
and 360 immersive videos of its workshops and of ces –
the scanning company, SynergyVR (
https://synergyvr.
co.uk), wanted an industrial use case to employ as a
demonstrator. Unrelated to the location tracking project,
this allowed Think Inside to study the working
environment without actually having to make a visit,
reducing the cost of the implementation.
The greatest tracking success has been achieved at
the Ann eld Plain, Stanley site, which has the most
buildings and a high variety of work. But across the whole
site Larder details the challenge: “Our problem is the
same as I imagine it is in almost any other company,
namely, ‘Where are my bits?’ At any given point, we have
around 1,000 open jobs/works orders, each of these can
have multiple assemblies and all the assemblies have
between three to 20 operations. This roughly translates
to tracking 2,000+ assemblies and 10,000+ open
operations over two facilities some three miles apart and
comprising 10 separate buildings – no mean feat.
“Repeat production parts generally have a heartbeat,
‘bus route’, and common product knowledge amongst the
production teams, with nicknames such as ‘racing cars’,
‘bats wings’, ‘headless cows’, etc. However, try launching
new product and you are throwing a needle that could
land in multiple barns of hay. Indeed, the NPI department
was the most frustrated and vocal at the start of this
project.” On the day of Machinery’s visit in March, in the
medium volume production workshop there were 433
jobs being tracked, for example.
This ‘lost work’ issue existed even
though Larder had overseen the creation of
intranet-available, Excel-based ‘departure
boards’ driven by SFDC and Epicor
data, visible in the of ce and
shop oor. These detail at
what operation stage a
job is and basically
guide the progress
On the need to locate parts, the head of digital
innovation says: “One of our specialities is adhering to
really tight manufacturing tolerances. Sometimes you
can only achieve that by doing things in a speci c
sequence. So maybe I’ve got a gusset here that might
look like nothing, but I can’t weld the next part without
this. So sometimes it is critical to go and track what
seems to be a seemingly unimportant part, but actually
it is critical to achieving an overall engineering outcome.”
Due to the layout of the various buildings, parts can
be stored temporarily in many locations across the site,
sometimes for days or weeks, so can easily get ‘lost’.
And because employee ef ciency is a key driver (one of
21 KPIs – see box item p14), workers may choose the
nearest, most easily discoverable job and not stick to
true priority. It was shop oor team leaders that
highlighted the potential savings a system that could
),identify location might deliver, in fact.
Initially used for locating jobs at Dyer Engineering, the
system has been extended to help locate end-of-line
inspection jigs, which is an increasing requirement, notes
Larder. Supplying parts direct to line for some of its large
OEM customers, the company uses inspection jigs to
assure zero-defect conformity. Previously metal, these
housing the transmitter (the move to 3D printing has
slashed costs, lead times and avoids tying up production
machines). “In an ideal world, they would be in speci c
location. But, you know, you could have one batch
coming through that’s nishing off and they’re getting
checked, and you’ve got another batch at start, so the jig
found that many companies we’ve worked with on other
engagements see a bene t, saying ‘we can’t nd
things in our factory, that will be great.’
I don’t come from a factory background, mine is in
electronics and telecoms, and I had kind of assumed
that, with all the wonderful software tools that exist,
nding things in a factory wouldn’t be dif cult. It’s
amazing some of the big things that are lost. So, it
doesn’t seem that it’s a problem that’s been cracked.”
(More, p14
12 April 2020 | www.machinery.co.uk | MachineryMagazine | @MachineryTweets
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