Machine monitoring lets manufacturers improve future processes

Fastenal is an American industrial supply company based in Winona, Minn. It provides companies with the fasteners, tools and supplies they need to manufacture products, build structures, protect personnel and maintain facilities and equipment. It has more than 2,600 branches throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Europe, along with 13 distribution centers. More than 400 of its 19,624 employees work at the company’s eight manufacturing locations.

In 2016, company management realized that it lacked adequate information about its manufacturing activities. The company needed to better understand its downtime, machine utilization and quality issues for the sake of improving processes.

Among the issues faced were assessing operations and choosing courses of action when managers weren’t around, according to Joe Garteski, operations manager of precision machining for Fastenal. “We wanted to know what happened from first shift to second shift to the weekend. What happened between those shifts? Was there any variation in productivity? If so, why? Why was that machine sitting idle? Was the machine down that day? Were there more setups that day?”

Image courtesy of MachineMetrics.

Another challenge was the lack of real-time information, Garteski noted. “Having to wait for an individual to come back on shift to gather specifics on various issues was very frustrating. Sometimes we would have to wait 16 hours before an operator came back on shift to speak with him to understand why a machine was down or why a specific fault occurred. Was there an issue with tooling? These are the things that we wanted to determine but didn’t have a solution for.”

Hidden Data

The information Fastenal needed can be gathered by sensors, shared by way of Ethernet or other communication technologies, and made visible and useful with analytics and reporting programs. Such data can be created more easily and at less cost than before.

Tom Kelly, executive director and CEO of Automation Alley, Troy, Mich., said, “Even small job shops can get a lot of functionality out of very inexpensive sensors, which they can practically toss around the plant and onto machines to start collecting data. You can get a ton of data out of your old machines, at low cost, in certain instances.”

Kelly suggested that rather than start with a new industrial-internet-of-things-ready CNC machine, smaller job shops may want to “start with, say, getting some sensors onto your old machine that can kick data to your mobile phone on weekends or on the second shift. Learn which of this data is useful to you.”

Kelly said the majority of companies Automation Alley works with are in the small-to-medium range, with small meaning fewer than 100 employees and medium meaning 101 to 500 workers. For such businesses, investing in capital equipment isn’t an easy decision, he noted. “We don’t want to suggest that the answer is always, ‘Go buy the big machine.’ “

Also, in some cases the necessary sensors are not only in place but are already generating the needed data. Professor Jun Ni, director of the S.M. Wu Manufacturing Research Center at the University of Michigan, said: “Companies always ask, ‘Do I need to put a sensor on my machine, on my robot arm?’ You don’t necessarily need to put on a lot of sensors. In many cases, the sensor is already there. In your PLC—your control—you have a lot of hidden information, data that’s not being utilized.

“I think of that data as being like crude oil,” he continued. “It’s underground, and it’s very valuable. But if you don’t put it through a refinery, you can’t use it. Same thing for the data. You need advanced analytics to make it useful.”

Many manufacturers, including small, downstream suppliers, already use programs designed to better understand and utilize processes.

Software Connect, Milwaukee, a vendor-neutral service that enables businesses to source suitable technology for their needs, released a report in November based on a survey of 154 manufacturers. The report analyzed the businesses’ current and planned use of Industry 4.0 components, such as material requirements planning (MRP) software, manufacturing execution system (MES) software and other industry-specific technology tools.

The survey found that 61 percent of small-to-medium manufacturers already use MRP software or plan to buy it within the next year. Almost half of them use it, and 27 percent plan to buy or upgrade it in the next 12 months. Also, 34 percent use MES software or plan to implement it within the next 3 years.

Making Data Visible

In 2016, Fastenal invested in a machine monitoring system to track everything that happens on a CNC machine and make the most pertinent of the information visible and easily accessible by stakeholders, from the operator on up.