Carolina Precision Technologies (CPT) is a market-leading manufacturer producing tight-tolerance parts for medical and aerospace devices. Its goal is to provide customers with outstanding products that exceed their expectations.
The company recognized that efficiency and quality were the keys to success in an industry with razor-thin margins and understood the importance of keeping tabs on production stats, job status, uptime, and setups. It needed accurate, real-time data to increase productivity, win more business, and remain globally competitive.
The Challenge
CPT operated a manual data tracking system with an employee dedicated to collecting utilization data. This manual tracking was prone to significant errors and was time-consuming, requiring over two hours per day.
There was regularly a full day between the point of data collection and the point when it was ready for consumption. This meant that the data was no longer actionable; many events had passed, and there was no longer anything that could be done to prevent or remedy any issues.
The Solution
CPT installed the MachineMetrics Machine Data Platform on 36 of its lathes and displayed MachineMetrics dashboards on TVs across the shop floor to showcase real-time machine performance.
Tablets were also mounted at each machine for operators to share feedback on downtime and quality. When a job fell behind production goals and the color of the tile changed on screen, text notifications were sent to managers to act immediately.
This connectivity, real-time data collection, and analysis gave CPT instant visibility into the realities of the shop floor. The transformation was so quick that the team was still acclimating to the monitoring system when actionable insights became available.
The Results
For CPT, there was an obvious and immediate benefit in understanding downtime and utilization. As the MachineMetrics platform continued to deliver results, CPT realized tremendous improvements in the first year of deployment.
MachineMetrics enabled CPT to understand what’s happening in real-time and respond to problems immediately. This increased machine utilization by 20% in the first year. As utilization increased, CPT found hidden capacity within its machines and gained an average of 688 extra operating hours per machine. The dollar impact of these improvements was significant, with the increased hours of capacity translating into an annual increase of $41,280 in billings per machine.
The ability to identify and solve problems as they occurred also led to improved quality measures. CPT began to focus more proactively on quality, and quality managers became more intimately involved in the system. And because operators used the tablet interface to classify rejections in real-time, managers could respond immediately, eliminating the paperwork required for non-conformance.
CPT’s initial investment in MachineMetrics was returned within only 11 days of using the software, and the company saved $1.5 million in its first year of machine monitoring.
Client:
Carolina Precision Technologies
Interviewee:
Gary Bruner, President
Industries:
Aerospace, Defense, Industrial
Equipment:
Citizen Swiss Turn Machines
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Carolina Precision Case Study
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