Industry Leader Reduces Paper, Gets Faster Reporting and Better Productivity

Project Scope:

• Tags: 13,266
• Screens: Approximately 30
• Clients: Approximately 8
• Devices used: 9, all MQTT
• Architectures used: Not applicable
• Databases used: Not applicable
• Historical data logged: Approximately 3,000

Project Summary:

This project was created by FG Automação Industrial for Saint-Gobain, a world leader in the design, manufacturing, and distribution of materials and services for the construction and industrial markets. To better attend to their customers' needs, FG Automação Industrial used Ignition Perspective and Sepasoft's OEE Downtime modules. By combining these modules, they were able to transform the Saint-Gobain tube production management process into a robust, user-friendly, dynamic, reliable, and 100% digital interface.

Problem: 

The idea of ​​the project was to provide a MES system that would deliver all OEE calculations respecting 3 basic premises:

1. Availability Calculation should be measured fully automatically. That means non-planned stops should always be collected directly by Ignition.

2. The system could not increase the activities of the employees involved; that is, data should not be entered more than once.

1. With the implementation of a paperless system, manual activities that depended on the use of paper should be digitized.
2. Activities performed on other systems should transfer the relevant data to Ignition or the other way around (with Ignition being responsible for sending the information).

3. The system should be delivered mostly in WEB and Responsive format, respecting the Mobile-First rule (due to practicality and specifications). Ninety-five percent of the system was developed using Perspective.

Solution: 

Ignition was the key tool, as the client needed a platform in WEB format that had a great capacity for communication with other systems (OPC UA, databases, REST/SOAP) and also had enough components (Perspective components) to digitize the company's manual processes.

Results:

The biggest gain was in the reliability of the calculations, since the Availability, Performance and Quality inputs no longer have to be collected manually at the time when the data should be inputted.

Beyond that, the speed of getting an accurate and visually rich report (a fantastic combination of Sepasoft OEE and Ignition Perspective) saves valuable time. Previously, it would have taken many hours to put together an equivalent report.

Also, the digitization of their entire process – making all production activities paperless – has had a powerful impact, allowing them to eliminate difficulties and errors, and optimize productivity.

Transcription:

00:16
Gabriel: I'm Gabriel Velloso and I am sales engineering with FG Automação Industrial. We are the authorized Ignition distributor for Brazil. For 20 years we've been active in the industrial market, providing products and service that add value to our customers' activities. We do pre-sales, customer support, technical consulting, and training for integrators who want to implement Ignition. We worked on this project for Saint-Gobain, award leader in the design, manufacturing and distribution of materials and sales for the construction and industrial markets. Saint-Gobain has a presence in 75 countries and has 190,000 employees. The company has worked in Brazil since 1937. Saint-Gobain Canalização, a pipe supplier based in Rio de Janeiro, has ambitious goals for sustainable development. With its capital 100% integrated in Brazil, Saint-Gobain Canalização has always been committed to environmental preservation, social growth and countries' economic development. For this project, we used Ignition Perspective for 95% of the development.

01:28
Gabriel: We also used Sepasoft OEE Downtime Module for Ignition. These tools allowed us to transform the Saint-Gobain tool production management process into a rich interface that's user friendly, dynamic, and reliable. It eliminated a lot of paper from Saint-Gobain's processes. Digitizing the entire process was very beneficial. We eliminated difficulties and errors while optimizing data and productivity. The idea of the project was to provide the client with a MES system that will deliver OEE calculations, respecting three basic premises. The first one, availability calculation, should be measured fully automatically. That is, a non-planned stop should always be collected directly by Ignition. The second one, the system could not increase the activities of the employees involved. That is, data should not be entered more than once. Third one, the system should be delivered mostly in web and responsive format, respecting the mobile first role. 95% of the system was developed using Perspective. Since the customer wants to use Perspective to have a web responsive format, and they want to use that for the entire corporate, the guideline for security measures is to split the servers.

02:45
Gabriel: So we think about using four MES servers to split each network they have. One for control, one for SCADA and one for all users of the plant, the corporate network. What we have done is use InVision to do screens for MES-related configurations using Sepasoft’s module. So basically what we have here are screens where they can register the materials that they are gonna produce, their shifts, they can correct some problems that may occur with the MES calculations and, as well, configure their states. And states here, the customer required we keep a numbering system that match their SAP solution. We've made a completely customized solution here for registering the states. So as you can see here, they can have all kind of stopovers and they can classify for utilities, for example. And then here, show that the machine that they have the problem and what happens. Was it lack of water, lack of energy? 

03:53
Gabriel: And this number here will always match the EAM that they use in the plant. The final goal for the customer is to see their OEE metrics in mobile form. We have done our reports possible using Perspective so they can see how are their numbers, basically putting the data here and they can see how the availability and what happened with the unplanned downtime and what happened when the machine was running. So they can just click here and see what time they spend for each part of the running time. And at the same time, they can see what happened when it was stopped. So if it was a problem of process, if they have some machine problem, it's all in this screen dynamically and on the go. For other topics, too, like performance, they can see how the production that they've made the system is tracking and tracing all products that have been produced out, pipes that have been produced the entire day.

04:55
Gabriel: So for this project, the biggest part here was reports because they have very complex reports that they used to do in Excel. And we just have to migrate that for Perspective. So they have the same accuracy of Ignition, but in web with the format that they are used to having in Excel. In this screen here, what they have is just a maintenance-related report. They have here, how much time of the stops are made in by problems, mechanical or electrical, and the configurability of the system, the impact in the OEE for the mechanical problems and the MTBF, how much brokers they have in the time that we suggested here and all kind of graphics. It's a very complex report that they have in fashion time, just taking the date and choosing the line here. Ignition was the key tool as the client did a platform in web format that had great capacity for communication with other systems: OPC UA, database, REST, SOAP. And at the same time, it had enough components, Perspective components to digitize the company's manual process. The biggest gain was the reliability of the calculation. Since the availability, performance and quality inputs were no longer manual to be collected at the appropriate time when the data should be put in, with a fantastic combination of Sepasoft OEE and Ignition Perspective, Saint-Gobain now has fast, accurate, and visually rich reporting. Previously, someone would spend many hours putting together a single report.