Merlin FOEE and Merlin DNC

Memex Inc. announced two new modules to the MERLIN open platform: MERLIN Financial Overall Equipment Effectiveness (FOEE) and MERLIN DNC. According to the comany, most manufacturers are totally in the dark in terms of knowing in real-time if they are making or losing money on a given machine tool, shift or plant. With the introduction of MERLIN FOEE, the company addresses this critical issue by combining OEE with financials.

Bob Hansen, long time manufacturing consultant and author of Overall Equipment “Effectiveness – A Powerful Maintenance/Production Tool For Increased Profits”, stated, “while OEE is an excellent metric, the truth is OEE tells you nothing about your profitability or more important, your potential profitability and this why I created Financial Overall Equipment Effectiveness. MERLIN FOEE is a new tool for leadership teams to visualize hourly profit contribution by product on constraint machines versus world class performance results. Key components of FOEE information can improve prioritization of product /machine scheduling, re-order Continuous Improvement projects, and reset sales and marketing strategies for better cash flow and higher profits. What is the value of an accelerating competitive advantage such as FOEE? Priceless.”

John Rattray, vice president of sales for MEMEX, stated, “FOEE is a game-changer because it provides the ability to visualize real-time financial profit contribution on a per machine/product basis giving management the ability to direct teams with the information to drive profitable scheduling and machine utilization.”

David McPhail, President and CEO for MEMEX, stated, “We acquired the rights to FOEE because we knew that this will completely change analytics for manufacturing. Imagine knowing in real-time if you are making or losing money at any given standalone machine tool or at any one of your plants. What was only a dream in manufacturing, is now a reality with MERLIN FOEE.”

The Direct/Distributed Numerical Control (DNC) market has been flat in terms of growth. With the full embrace of platforms such as MEMEX’s MERLIN this has caused countless manufacturing plants and shops to re-evaluate their DNC solutions. MEMEX made a strategic decision to purchase Dostek in 2015 because of their exceptional reputation in the industry.

Doug Struthers, MEMEX DNC architect, stated, “After 30 years at Dostek, I joined MEMEX for one primary reason — to create the most comprehensive, flexible, easy to use and easy to troubleshoot DNC software using the MERLIN platform. This was my opportunity to take my many decades of DNC experience to create the absolute best DNC software. MERLIN DNC will absolutely cause manufacturing to rethink their entire DNC strategy.”

The key high-level steps for successful implementation of Management Execution Systems (MES) such as MERLIN Tempus are measure, monitor and manage. Nigel Southway, international consultant, coach for Operational Continuous Improvement & LEAN Thinking and author of Cycle Time Management … Fast Track to Productivity Improvement, stated, “we have developed the MERLIN Continuous Improvement Professional Services (CI-PS) program to couple the power of the MERLIN Tempus platform with a comprehensive implementation process that enables organizations to embrace the CI culture. Utilizing time-tested, integrated templates, reporting methodology and advanced problem solving tools the MERLIN CI roadmap drives productivity improvement to achieve benchmark operating effectiveness.”