Production data now comes in showers

Mira, the domestic and commercial showers maker, now part of the Kohler group, based in Cheltenham, reports machine set-up times halved, production data management and operations greatly improved and waste reduced, following implementation of a PC-based network specifically for shopfloor manufacturing control. Mira, which has a turnover of more than £85 million and a workforce of 700, sells throughout Europe, North America and Japan. Like so many others, the firm says it stays ahead by investing not only in product development and machines, but also in IT. In fact, it runs SAP R/3 at the enterprise level, but this improvement was confined to production and is not directly integrated with SAP. Mira’s manufacturing is not particularly complex, with a reasonable make-to-stock contribution and relatively little change, so the factory still operates a white planning board for work-to lists, with capacity planning on Excel taking aggregated demand from SAP. There’s no, shop floor data capture, batch tracking or feedback mechanisms. What Mira has done is replace 14 first-generation DNeT industrial terminal stations on the shopfloor, and ageing DNC software, with modern industrial PCs (IPCs) on a client-server network operating under Windows NT, as well as a Quadro RM production data management system, all from shopfloor systems developer DLoG. And the result has been excellent; despite a price tag of just £19,000, it has transformed operations. Before Quadro RM, although the existing DNC system handled downloading of NC programs and tooling data to the machines, production documents, like tooling lists and drawings or production sheets, were on paper. So the factory operated the usual paper chase of creating, circulating and disposing of documents. Mira wanted a system that would do all this – manage NC programs, tool data, set-up and fixture plans, and provide graphics and text – but do it digitally. Handling its SDRC-generated component CAD files was another requirement, and the system also needed to allow for NC programs to be sent back from the CNC machines to the DNC system (for example, if a machine setter had to make changes because of mods or problems). Beyond these, Mira wanted faster data transmission and user-friendliness, with simple touch screen interfaces on the shopfloor and appropriate access controls for users in work preparation, programming and machine operation. Project manager Derek Bradley says that he and his team researched the market, and ultimately selected its existing supplier DloG. "The prices of the rival systems were almost identical," says Bradley, "but the functionality and performance weren’t." Its Quadro RM production management system would achieve all its objectives, with all production and program data on one server, and fully integrated data management from work preparation right through to the machines. Similarly, its modules for editing and comparing NC programs and the display program for graphics and text were ideal. The system works Following an eight-week pilot with two IPCs on four turning machines and machining centres to test and prove the system, Mira bought it. All had gone well, and the system’s flexibility had also paid off in terms of data transfer, with DLoG’s Quadro Exchange software used successfully to prepare data records automatically for export from the old system into the Quadro RM database. At the end of the test, the original DNeT stations were disconnected and replaced by the IPCs. Conversion of the machines took just one week. Says Bradley: "Now, manufacturing gets a PIC (production inspection card) on the IPCs, with its list of dimensions. Then there’s the bill of documents – what machines, what to do, like a work instruction sheet, with a list of gauges, tooling and jaws to go and get. Then the system downloads the program to run and the machine tool offsets for the presetters. So it sets up the machine tools and cutters for him. Then the users can open up files of the tooling kit: graphical drawings and photos which show them which tool, which holder and where it goes – which insert. And there’s the list of all the operations. It all takes seconds." Production engineer Clive Hughes adds: "The IPCs’ touch panels allow our machine operators to retrieve a job folder at the touch of a finger. And, unlike before, the complete job is always available. Searching for individual, scattered documents is now a thing of the past." Says Bradley: "Now we can turn around an average machine with say five tools in about 20—25 minutes: we have done some other things, but it was about 40—45 minutes before. And it’s also much easier to maintain the data."