In this age of the Internet of Things (IOT), Industry 4.0 and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), many business processes are rigorously managed and analysed. The size and scope of these company wide management systems can unfortunately leave a gap in business data – data about what is happening on the manufacturing floor.
What happens in the black hole between manufacturing work orders and despatch?
Fortunately, a small NZ company called Aspect Productivity Technology has developed software called AspectPL that can bridge this gap. AspectPL is machine connected, ERP integrated, software for live manufacturing scheduling and production floor visibility.
Allan Orr the founder of Aspect Productivity Technology explains. “AspectPL can integrate with any existing ERP system. This means production data can flow both ways. Orders can be extracted from the ERP, dropped into AspectPL for production and at the end of the manufacturing process, production data can be automatically integrated back into the ERP.”
But AspectPL delivers more than that. Because AspectPL digitises the manufacturing floor it also mitigates the manual tasks that can hamstring a manufacturing team – like manual scheduling and physically checking machine progress. With AspectPL the schedule is produced quickly and easily and because AspectPL works in real time, the schedule & production data is always up to date.
Allan Orr explains. “Data delivers visibility – if you know what’s happening on a manufacturing floor – you can improve it. The analysis offered allows manufacturing and management staff to drill down on problem areas – such as product rejects, die change problems and net utilisation of manufacturing machines.”
You could say Aspect Productivity Technology is shining a light on the black hole of manufacturing.