Chesterfield-based Sterling Machining installed FourJaw’s manufacturing analytics platform on 14 of its CNC machines, to support and inform its continuous improvement strategy.
Co-owner and production manager, Andy White says: “We had an ERP in place but no way of accurately measuring jobs and their profitability, until the jobs were finished. If a job took longer than expected, we couldn’t see why. FourJaw’s machine monitoring system has given us valuable data that we use to understand machine utilisation, operational efficiency and profitability. In the last 12 months our business has grown from £3.8m to £5m turnover.”
FourJaw’s MachineLink IIoT device can be easily and quickly self-installed on any manufacturing machine, regardless of brand, type or age, which makes it perfect for small and medium-sized businesses who’d prefer a low-cost, no-fuss ‘plug-and-play’ solution. By monitoring and analysing machine data, FourJaw enables manufacturers to make machines run productively and profitably.
The Industry 4.0 technology has also inspired a degree of competitiveness amongst the workforce. Andy explains: “Initially, the guys on the shop floor were a little reluctant but soon became interested to see how it worked. It didn’t take long for them to become competitive, wanting to get the best machine efficiency scores resulting in utilisation going from 75% to 100%. This means that we are making more products with the same resources, lowering the cost of manufacturing the goods and therefore improving profitability.”
The extra capacity created by utilising the existing machinery more effectively has also created more jobs. They identified that they could change the way the shop floor was configured and put in an extra machine operator. Doing so made them more productive and the extra operator pays for himself because the machines won't be stood idle.
Since installing FourJaw on their machines, the team at Sterling Machining has improved many of its processes, informed by the platform’s accurate, real-time data. For example, the team uses historic data to see how long similar jobs have taken and use this information to quote more confidently for future work.
The management team at Sterling has also used FourJaw’s data insight to make informed decisions when considering large capital outlays, such as new machines. Andy describes the situation, many manufacturers come up against: “You may have been in the position where you think you need to buy another machine because you think you’ve got a capacity problem, but now we use FourJaw we can see where we have capacity that we’re not using.
“In summary, FourJaw is the tool we use to maintain a ‘drumbeat’ of improvement and create a healthy, competitive environment to keep trying to do better".
