Although digitalization has entered every industry, the manufacturing arena still manages most of the operations manually, which leads to various difficulties in designs, productions, and poor inventory management. The manufacturers in the present era are utilizing emerging technologies like analytics, AI, machine learning, IoT, IIoT, blockchain for better quality management and real-time monitoring of goods. With an enormous amount of data being generated every day, these latest technologies enable manufacturers to operate on an integrated data model.
One of the major technological innovations in recent time, blockchain, is helping manufacturers create new business models. Blockchain not only increases visibility across every area of manufacturing, from strategic sourcing to procurement to shop floor operations but also aggregates value transactions to improve supply chain efficiency. With improved supplier order accuracy and product quality, manufacturers can easily meet delivery dates and increase the ROI on digital technologies.
To gain maximum value from the production, it is necessary for shop floors to create a contextually rich stream of data that provides insights into product quality, machine performance, and machine yield. IoT sensors aid the operators in real-time monitoring of the manufacturing site. There are various IIoT analytics frameworks available in the market that help manufacturers contextualize real-time plant efficiency KPIs, such as overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), direct material costing, production yield rates, and efficiency.
In the wake of these technology transitions, we are glad to feature several companies that are continually proving their mettle in the field of shop floor management with several innovative technological capabilities and success stories up their sleeves. Tutelar Technologies is providing a manufacturing execution system (MES) to measure and control activities in the production areas. In addition, the company offers a warehouse management system (WMS) to control the movement and storage of materials within a warehouse and process the associated transactions, including shipping, receiving, putaway and picking to optimize the cost of timely order fulfillment. Another company, The Lake Companies, offers an innovative manufacturing execution solution—SyteLine Shop-Trak that seamlessly connects Infor SyteLine (CloudSuite Industrial) with MES to deliver better business results.
Adding value to the manufacturing space is Rockware Corp. that has been delivering Andon display, HMI, SCADA, and MES for over 15 years, using Microsoft database-driven applications. Rockware’s solutions comprise many prebuilt dashboards, interfaces, historical data logs, and reports to help customers in writing values to PLCs comparable to an industrial HMI where applicable.
Likewise, riteSOFT provides warehouse management solutions to automate data collection for small and medium-sized manufacturers and distributors around the globe. riteSCAN Mobile Warehouse for SYSPRO and riteTIME Labor Data & Time Tracking are seamless solutions that leverage information and technology to optimize efficiency. Another featured company, Cornerstone Systems, Inc. (CSI), provides a complete job shop management solution, Visual Shop for process-oriented job shops.
We hope this issue of the Manufacturing Technology Insights helps you build the partnership you and your firm needs to foster a technologically-driven shop floor environment.
We present to you Manufacturing Technology Insights’ “Top 10 Shop Floor Management Solution Providers 2019.”
