Rockware Corp.: Connecting the Dots on the Shop Floor

Ryan Ray, COO

With its premier customizable software products strategically architected to address the unique needs of shop floor management, Rockware has been instrumental in delivering a turnkey automated data collection solution for injection molding departments, assembly lines, and manufacturing environments. The company has developed Rockware IMM (Intelligent Manufacturing Machine) that collects machine cycles automatically and combines with configuration data and personnel input to provide real-time and historical information. Rockware IMM, as fully configured and licensed off-the-shelf software, streamlines facility management across manufacturing and production areas.

Rockware works closely with Team Ray Technologies—an industrial control and integrations company—with a singular focus on eliminating the longstanding predicament of integrating a spectrum of equipment and instruments at a centralized location within a manufacturing plant. From the integration standpoint, Rockware IMM serves as a highly configurable facility system that interlinks all the systems within a plant through a common, interactive interface, enabling clients to drill in to individual applications in real-time and procure a holistic view of their plants in the palms of their hands. This helps plant owners monitor KPIs across multiple plant environments while maintaining overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). As Ryan Ray, COO of Rockware, describes it, “The flexibility of our software lets clients connect their equipment, ERP systems, and third-party software across various manufacturing and production environments.” Deemed as an effective plant-wide solution, Rockware IMM allows clients to seamlessly gather machine data and track equipment action through charts, and obtain visibility of machine action versus performance via trend diagrams. Moreover, the company has also expanded the software’s functionality with integrated quality modules and health and safety modules.

Besides integration, Rockware IMM houses template Windows-based client applications with unlimited installations coupled with a standard Shift Recap reporting module that meticulously groups every action during a production shift. This Shift Recap module empowers supervisors with the ability to comment, manipulate, reconcile, scrap downtime by operators, and email or mass-distribute an end-of-shift report. What’s more is that the managers can filter the datasets to be displayed, and choose from a list of over 150 pre-configured reports for individual logs that can be printed as either graphical, tabular or specialty reports.