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Remote Monitoring at Radiall

Gregory Chauvet
By Gregory Chauvet General Manager, JPB Systeme
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Despite the turmoil that industry has endured over the last two years, we appear to be turning a corner on COVID-19. As swift and effective as vaccination programs have been in confronting the virus itself, the COVID-19 experience has brought with it some fundamental changes to the way businesses operate.

For one, the pandemic imposed a revised model of working. Indeed, from the very outset, companies, including my own, were forced to have teams operate remotely. For some businesses this presented the perfect opportunity to “trial” new ways of working they may have been considering. In many cases, it has evolved into an office/home hybrid model that is now commonplace across many organizations, regardless of the industry in which they operate.

The truth is that such new approaches to working were already becoming the norm; COVID-19 merely forced the model on the world and accelerated its uptake. We were already living in a world where more and more business operations were being conducted on the move, away from the office or production facility, way before COVID-19.

That world, as it was prior to early 2019, and as it is now, is one in which there is an increasing expectation of instant access to information—be it from a work perspective, or indeed in our personal lives. The plethora of news and information apps loaded on our smartphones give us instant access to the world, and, furthermore, we have grown to expect that information within seconds and in just a few clicks.

So, given this change to working models, and the reliance on information at our fingertips, there is a growing need for business owners and manufacturing directors to be able to stay abreast of production operations without being rooted to the production floor.

A ‘Shazam’ for Industry

This is an added challenge for those solution providers who are first simply seeking to facilitate production and improve efficiencies. The need to achieve this—and also provide increased flexibility for manufacturers—was a key criterion in the development of our own KeyProd production monitoring platform. Designed specifically for industrial environments, this cloud-based solution provides a consolidated real-time vision of production to analyze quality and performance indicators such as overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).

Importantly, in just one click on a smartphone, manufacturers have complete visibility and control of their factory floor performance—whether they’re in the factory, on the road, or at home. In doing so, they can assess the different causes of machine downtime and take steps to correct an issue, as well as anticipate various problem areas to reduce future stoppages.

Among the companies to trial KeyProd is Radiall, a 70-year-old global manufacturer of connectors and associated components for electronic applications across multiple industries.

“We have used KeyProd on a robotic assembly machine, where it enabled us to quickly monitor the machine’s production indicators, understanding the causes and frequency of stoppages,” said Rattena Tang, a project manager at Radiall.

“KeyProd was very easy and quick to install, and the simplicity of the user interface allows operators to quickly enter the reasons for a stoppage, facilitating the identification of issues and heir causes from the field,” Tang continued. “Collectively, this has enabled us to establish targeted action plans to improve the efficiency of our system.”

As the general manager of an Industry 4.0-enabled manufacturing company, I know the importance of maintaining efficient and profitable production.

Like many, I also value the increased versatility that technology can deliver when it comes to how we live and work. If a result of the COVID-19 experience is an increase in the expectation and desire to have more flexibility within our lives, while still being able to work effectively, then it is incumbent upon solution providers to continue to pioneer technologies that enable us all to strike that perfect balance.

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