Productive Times: 5 days to ROI

END USER: Northeast Tool & Manufacturing, (704) 882-1187, www.northeasttool.us

SOLUTION PROVIDER: MachineMetrics, (413) 341-5747, www.machinemetrics.com

CHALLENGE: Reduce the time and manual inspection required to measure productivity.

SOLUTION: A machine monitoring system.

Founded in 1964, Northeast Tool & Manufacturing machines parts and produces complex assemblies for numerous industries, including aerospace, defense, energy and medical. The Matthews, N.C., job shop operates more than 200 machines and runs three shifts at its 30,000-sq.-ft. facility.

However, the means for accurately assessing productivity on the shop floor was lacking because the company did not have a method to obtain real-time data about its production, according to CEO Rusty Arant. Data collection involved shop foremen and lead employees entering data into report forms and spreadsheets, he said. “We were clocking in and out of jobs, but we weren’t getting the true data, the effective data, at the machine.”

Arant added that measuring real-time productivity was time-intensive and required manual inspection of cycle times, setup times and downtime.

A MachineMetrics tablet is magnetically mounted onto a machine tool and displays the operator view, where operators can categorize downtime and track quality and jobs. Image courtesy of MachineMetrics.

“This manual data collection process was not only prone to error, but there also was no way to visualize the results,” he said. As a result, the company struggled with identifying the bottlenecks in its procedures before the job was completed.

Keeping employees accountable to the company’s production goals was also a challenge. Northeast Tool did not have a system that could properly permit plant managers to make operational decisions based on real-time data, Arant said. “Our facility lacked a system that could empower our employees with the opportunity to take ownership over their work.”