The tried-and-true benefits of agility, flexibility, and resilience in manufacturing
World-class manufacturing has always hinged on the ability to give customers what they want: a reliable production timeline and a product they can trust. But as you’ve likely experienced firsthand, evolving technologies combined with the pace of changing consumer demand means that manufacturers must often account for growing SKU portfolios, shorter product lifecycles, and increased pressures to work faster. These dynamics and many others have painted a new picture for what manufacturing success looks like. At the center of that new picture is the ability to remain flexible, agile, and resilient—even in the face of rapid change and without sacrificing the quality or yield that customers have come to expect.
Easier said than done? It doesn’t have to be. In fact, your plant floor likely already holds the key. Your production lines can yield massive amounts of data that can provide clear insight into your asset health and help drive more informed decision-making. Time and again, we’ve seen that with the right technology, manufacturing leaders like yourself can leverage the data they already have, dig deeper, and gain clarity across every step of their operations. This enables greater flexibility to adapt when things don’t go as planned. As you may have very well experienced, the ability to quickly rebound from such a scenario is perhaps the very definition of resilience in this line of work.
Fortunately, getting the most value from your asset data doesn’t mean you have to hire a data scientist. Plex Asset Performance Management (APM) by Rockwell Automation does the work for you. Plex APM works by contextualizing, integrating, and applying real-time equipment data and built-in analytics to capture and visualize insights on machine health and performance. Then you can easily compare machines against a desired state, adjust accordingly, and even generate early notifications of potential disruptions so you can address them before they become costly.
Monitor machine health to reduce unplanned downtime and improve throughput
Plex APM helps your enterprise avoid production disruption by connecting shop floor performance data to maximize production and operational visibility. That means fewer surprises for you and more on-time orders for your customers.
Here are just some of the ways Plex APM delivers results:
- It establishes connectivity to virtually any asset or data stream, helping you analyze trends and compare operational data against other KPIs to discover new opportunities for improvement. Pre-built, intuitive dashboards allow you to view real-time status at the asset or plant level, so you’re always aware of which machines are off, in-cycle, idle, experiencing a problem, or something else.
- Learning from past disruptions is one of the best ways to prevent future bottlenecks, unplanned stoppages, and unnecessary rework. Plex APM technology can provide historical views of logged asset status and event logs that make it easy to visualize data over time with graphical trend lines, so you’re better prepared to make informed decisions based on previous occurrences.
If you’re interested in learning more about Asset Performance Management, visit our page on Plex APM by Rockwell Automation. Plex APM is just one component of the Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform, a fully integrated, end-to-end solution that powers your entire enterprise. Contact us to learn more.