Staying Ahead of the Machine Tool, Part 3: Coaching Over Monitoring

Machine monitoring is pointless unless the data is used to drive continuous improvement. 

The Chicago Bears don’t have a head monitor – they have a head coach. It would be wasteful for the team to hire someone who does not know strategy and instruction. The same is true for machine monitoring: collecting machine data is useless unless the manufacturer reacts to the data, creating an action plan for improvement in efficiency. With machine monitoring tools such as Slytrackr from Advanced Machining and Engineering’s partner company,Slytek Inc., manufacturers can realize data that can change the outcome of their jobs. 

For every job cycle, a manufacturer is either winning or losing. So, if a job is estimated at a three- or four-minute cycle time, but the actual cycle time ends up being five or six minutes per cycle, a lot of time is lost. Although a couple minutes here and there might not seem like much time to lose at first, over the course of hundreds of parts, an entire 24 hours is lost. When a machine isn’t cutting, it’s not making money. 

Activating data to go for the win 

Although a machine is going to run according to its program, the operator can make improvements to changeover times to decrease the overall cycle time. However, usually operators won’t be the ones to catch their own faults. This is when machine monitoring comes into play. Reviewing the data from the monitoring system highlights trouble areas where the slowdowns are occurring in the machining process. For instance, changeover time data might show a variation of 30 seconds to three minutes throughout the machining cycles. By observing three or four cycles on the data collected, managers can discover where it took the operator more time to change out a particular part. 

Coaching the team to stay ahead of the game 

At that point, a manager can coach operators to help them increase their changeover times. It might be that they failed to pay attention to when the machine stopped running, and therefore, they didn’t respond quickly to the machine to change out a part. But by employing quick-change fixturing and other continuous improvement tactics, cycle time can be dramatically decreased. In this real-life scenario, cycle time was cut down from three minutes to 45-55 seconds. 

Talk to AME about Slytek! 

To learn more about how to get ahead of the machine tool and stay ahead of it, visit Slytek’s homepage to get started with improving your machine tools’ performance. These machine monitoring solutions have been designed specifically to be compatible with legacy machinery.