The Fabrication Department at Cates needed to improve the company’s UL 508A control panel manufacturing efficiency, address inventory tracking issues, conquer scheduling challenges, and increase manufacturing throughput. After defining the project’s requirements, they turned to the Cates system integration engineering team to design and implement a solution. The engineering team chose Inductive Automation’s Ignition software platform, which enabled them to custom-design a solution that precisely fit the Cates business model and could be easily modified to address future needs.
Using the new custom software, over a 5-year period Cates achieved a 225% increase in panel manufacturing throughput and a 35% increase in efficiency, as well as improved inventory tracking and simplified scheduling.
This manufacturing efficiency improvement case study outlines:
- The Cates fabrication team’s project goals, manufacturing pain points, and project requirements
- The Ignition software solution the engineering group custom-designed for the project
- The project results
- How the project helped each department in our panel manufacturing process (manufacturing floor graphic showing results in each department)
Panel Manufacturing Efficiency Project Goals
The two primary project goals were to provide the fabrication group at Cates with:
- A visual way to communicate the priority of jobs and key tasks to staff on the control panel manufacturing floor, and
- A method for technicians on the manufacturing floor to communicate needs and issues back to other departments.
In achieving these goals, the fabrication team hoped to address the department’s key pain points, which included: manufacturing inefficiency, inventory tracking issues, and scheduling challenges. Increasing manufacturing throughput was an additional objective.
Customer Pain Points
Manufacturing Efficiency Roadblocks
Cates uses the Epicor ERP system, which is large, complicated, and provides a great deal of information. Finding data quickly requires user familiarity. Departments involved in control panel manufacturing need specific information from Epicor, but not all departments need direct access.
The fabrication team decided that manufacturing efficiency could be improved if:
- Each department could view only the information required to do its job, and
- All the required data could be displayed on one screen rather than having to search through multiple screens.
Additionally, since Epicor licenses are expensive and only allow a limited number of users, costs could be reduced with a solution that allows an unlimited number of users.
Inventory Tracking Issues
The fabrication floor was often blind to parts status for work in progress. If a part was missing, it was not known if and when the part may arrive. Cates determined that providing parts status, such as inventory availability, Bill of Materials access, and purchase order due dates, could help eliminate a lot of questions around job material on the shop floor.
Scheduling Challenges
Scheduling issues were also present on the manufacturing floor due to changing priorities, parts availability, and a lack of clear communication from fabrication supervisors to the manufacturing floor. Cates realized that providing administrators with the ability to send one update from their desk that would reach the entire floor would clear up the scheduling conflicts for technicians.
Insufficient Manufacturing Throughput
The management team at Cates was projecting a certain company-wide level of growth in the coming years. Based on those projections, the Fabrication Department needed to scale up to another level of manufacturing throughput to handle the future projected volume of panels.
Project Requirements
To guide the project, the fabrication group specified the requirements in the sections below.
Custom-Designed for Improving Manufacturing Performance
Overall, the system must be custom-designed to precisely fit the way Cates does business and allow easy modifications to accommodate future needs.
Stations for Manufacturing Floor
- Five stations with a PC, monitor, keyboard, and mouse are required for the inventory, OEM, custom layout, custom wiring, and test areas.
- Stations will display key messages to the manufacturing floor, including department performance measurables, manufacturing scorecard performance, and timed communication such as clean-up time before the end of the day.
Departmental Touchscreen Kiosks
- Nine touchscreen kiosks are required to allow the following departments to view the priority of manufacturing jobs: shipping, large manufacturing customers, OEM, Test, Custom Wiring, Custom Layout, Labelling, Inventory, and Express.
- Departmental users should be able to assign a technician to the job and log it as active. The assignment data will update the active production list.
- The kiosks should allow departments to make requests to other departments.
Example
The Test Department generates a request:
Fuses are needed for job 522435-2-1.
The task is assigned to the Inventory Department.
The task is displayed on the active task list on the kiosk of the inventory area.
When the Inventory Department finishes the task, they flag it as complete. - The kiosk in each department should display the specific information the department needs on a single screen, filtering out data from the ERP that is not required.
Job Information Display to Enhance Manufacturing Productivity
- Production supervisors should be able to prioritize jobs as needs dictate.
- Real-time Epicor information, including parts status for jobs, actual labor time, and actual costs, should be pulled and added to job status by matching the job number.
- Job review and reporting should also be done through the Ignition software, including the ability to move a job over to a shipped state, with the records retained for later reference and reporting using timing, customer, or job as filters.
- All Cates departments should be able to view the status of manufacturing jobs to keep customers updated – the software should allow an unlimited number of users.
- The active data set should enable streamlined reporting for Key Performance Indicator (KPI) measurements.
Project Solution: Custom Ignition Software
Ignition Software Platform Selection
After the manufacturing team specified the project requirements, the engineering system integration team designed and implemented the solution. Inductive Automation’s Ignition software platform was selected based on its suitability for the requirements and the engineering group’s familiarity with the platform.
Ignition’s ability to easily integrate with a variety of systems and databases allowed the team to quickly leverage the existing ERP data from Epicor into the specific views that the manufacturing team required.
Administrative and User Views
Two sets of “views” were created: one focused on administrative functions, which was limited to privileged users, and one focused on the “manufacturing floor” users, showing the particular data relevant to them. Along with Ignition’s native integration with the Active Directory system used by Cates, these views allow the team to easily segment the data shown to the particular user, while allowing everyone to run the same application.
Solution Development
Development was handled by a small internal team, and regular design reviews were held with the manufacturing stakeholders to ensure that requirements were met. The groups completed the project over a 6-month period several years ago. Since that time, Cates has made ongoing enhancements to continuously improve the company’s manufacturing process.
Capacity Planning Enhancements
After the software had been in place for some time, the Fabrication Department identified a need to add capacity planning capability. The volume of panels Cates was producing had grown to a level that required more formal capacity planning.
The Engineering Department built a scheduling tool that incorporated production staff requests for time off from the Paylocity system into the existing job information in the database.
The tool allows the Fabrication Department to do capacity planning by aligning current and possible future jobs with production staff availability.
Project Results: Increased Panel Manufacturing Efficiency
The Cates engineering team achieved the two primary project goals by providing the fabrication team with a visual way to communicate the priority of jobs and key tasks to manufacturing floor staff, as well as a method for technicians to communicate needs and issues from the manufacturing floor back to other departments.
In addition to these two goals, over a 5-year period Cates panel manufacturing used the new software to increase throughput 225%, improve efficiency 35%, streamline inventory tracking, and simplify scheduling. See how the project helped each department on our manufacturing floor graphic below (click on image to view larger).
Higher Manufacturing Throughput
Scaled Up
The custom production resource planning software enabled the Fabrication Department to significantly increase throughput to meet the volume requirements of large OEM customers. A key feature of the software is that it allows the department to scale as needed to meet demand.
Using the new custom Ignition software, over a 5-year period Cates panel manufacturing achieved a 225% increase in throughput and a 35% increase in efficiency as well as improved inventory tracking and simplified scheduling.
Added Manufacturing Locations
Cates needed to bring a new panel manufacturing facility online. Because a key project requirement for the software was to allow easy modification, the team was able to easily expand by adding another facility with only minor changes to the software.
Once the new location was added, the project team was able to coordinate jobs seamlessly between the two production facilities.
Accessed Real-Time Performance Reporting
Using the custom software has allowed management to view and monitor real-time, streamlined reporting of KPI measurements. The reports are a pared-down version of EPICOR data.
The ability to use the software to pull these reports in just a few seconds has saved management a significant amount of time over the previously used method of manually compiling the data for each job.
Increased Manufacturing Efficiency
Enabled Online Feedback Capability
Manufacturing technicians are now able to make requests or provide feedback on job status or requirements to other departments directly from the kiosk. This saves a lot of time and wasteful movement as compared to the previous manual method.
Before
John, a technician, is about to start the layout for a job and realizes he’s missing some parts.
He goes to find a supervisor to report the problem.
The supervisor goes to the Purchasing Department.
The buyer has to stop what he or she is doing to investigate.
The supervisor returns and updates John on the status of the parts.
After
John realizes he’s missing some parts for the job.
He creates a request from the manufacturing floor kiosk: Wire is needed for job 523619-2-1.
The task is assigned to the Inventory Department; it appears on the active task list on the kiosk in the inventory area.
The Inventory Department investigates and updates the status of the wire.
John sees the update on his screen.
Provided Department-Specific Screens
The custom software has increased the efficiency of each department by displaying only the information each department requires about active jobs on a single screen.
Having the software filter out information from the ERP that the department does not need saves users time searching through numerous screens in the ERP for the required data.
Improved Inventory Tracking
Enabled Better Job Material Coordination
Cates departments can now better coordinate to ensure job materials arrive with enough lead time to complete panels by the required job ship date.
The kiosk displays the status of job materials, and any issues can be escalated for resolution or so that substitutes can be found. Color coding allows issues/red flags to be highlighted so they are easy to see onscreen.
Assigned Inventory Locations
The materials group can now assign work-in-progress bins with inventory locations so that the layout team knows exactly where their parts are stored when starting a new job. This eliminates the inefficiency of searching the inventory for job parts.
Simplified Scheduling
Improved Visibility for Customer Communication
The custom software enables customer-facing departments to check the status of the production schedule and update customers about the status of their jobs.
Incorporated Forward-Looking Capacity Data
The capacity planning tool allows management to view current jobs with forward-looking capacity data and determine whether production staff overtime is needed to meet promised delivery dates.
By coupling employee availability data with current and future job information, the tool allows management to better plan for upcoming jobs and identify available capacity to service customers.
Implemented Job Management Capabilities
Management can modify job information (e.g., due date, materials, priority, etc.) at any time, and it will update throughout the system. Additionally, they can view a master list of jobs and filter and sort the list to view only certain types of jobs.
For example:
- View only Custom Panel jobs
- View only Custom Panel jobs that are over budget or approaching the budget
- View only Custom Panel jobs with material issues
The custom software solution that our Cates Engineering Department has provided to the Fabrication Department has enabled the growth and efficiency of our department to levels that have not been experienced before the solution was implemented. The custom software has made each and every job function within fabrication more productive and effective.
Tyler Abbott, Director of Fabrication at Cates
Panel Manufacturing Efficiency Boosted by Custom Ignition Software
Using new custom software designed by the Cates system integration team, the fabrication team was able to boost throughput, increase manufacturing efficiency, improve inventory tracking, and simplify production scheduling.
The Ignition software platform enabled the engineers to customize the solution to precisely fit the company’s daily manufacturing operations and thus achieve the project’s goals.
