The current economic situation is an impetus for many plastic molding companies to think about how to ensure an increase in production efficiency and thereby their competitiveness. It is no longer possible to tolerate confusion and errors in the accompanying documents of the order circulating in the production, uncontrolled exceeding of the standard consumption of granulate, or lack an up-to-date overview of ongoing contracts and their completion dates for important strategic decisions. Suppliers of moldings are also constantly under increasing pressure from customers to maintain a high quality of moldings with the possibility of proving it.
Analysis of processes, their optimization and subsequent deployment of the MES PHARIS system in a modification according to the requirements of the given operation will ensure overall transparency and efficiency of production. The system fully replaces the outdated method of manual management of accompanying paper documents (production orders, technological procedures, adjustment sheets…) including inefficient and delayed paper production output. The goal of the MES PHARIS production system is to ensure an intelligent interface between technology (injection molding machines, granulate dryers, CNC machines, lines…) and the ERP system (SAP, K2, NAVISION, KARAT, QI…). The production system can then provide accurate and timely information to the ERP system online.
PRODUCTION PREPARATION AND PLANNING
Production preparation consists mainly in the detailed definition of technological procedures. It is possible to define technological procedures completely autonomously in the production system, or it is possible to use the definitions of existing technological procedures in the ERP system and to take them over and enrich them in the production system. Technological procedures subsequently serve for production planning and preparation of operations (work queues) for individual workplaces.
The advantage of the sophisticated management of variant technological procedures in the MES PHARIS production system is the definition and mapping of the following relationships:
- Definition of standard granulate consumption, or other materials.
- Definition of continuity with technology (injection molding, mold, granulate dryer…).
- Definition of parameters and permitted tolerance limits.
- Mapping of file attachments (adjustment sheet, instructional video…).
- Definition of operations and steps across all workplaces (injection, painting, assembly…).
- Definition of consumption of packaging materials.
- Integration of control plans using the follow-up to control equipment – scales, measuring devices, etc.
After authentication and approval by an authorized person (usually a technologist), the technological procedures serve as templates for the Production Planning module or for manual creation of production orders.
Production planning is based on technological procedures and breaks down production orders into individual operations according to the definition of the technological procedure. Production planning in MES PHARIS takes into account the following dependencies for the desired completion date:
- Verification of granulate stock and packaging units and their online reservation.
- Form blocking.
- Blockage of injection molding capacity.
- Consideration of overhead times for mold placement.
Planning in the MES PHARIS production system offers dynamic creation of short-term and medium-term plans according to various points of view (economic option, or according to a critical deadline, regardless of the cost of production). The result of the Planning module (link to the module) is an optimally created work queue for individual workplaces, which is available on the operator terminal of the respective workplace (injection, painting, assembly…). The operator at the terminal in production then starts the scheduled operations.
MANAGEMENT AND MONITORING OF PRODUCTION IN PROGRESS
The introduction of the production system into production precedes the equipment of the press shop operation with operator terminals. Operator terminals can be placed at each injection molding machine or at each assembly workplace.
The following tasks are solved on operator terminals with touch screens:
- Operator login (identification).
- Start of a planned production operation.
- Reading form identification (barcode, RFID).
- Production removal including non-conforming and type of non-conforming.
- Display of the order in progress (number of manufactured and remaining pieces).
- Possibility to display production documentation (technological procedure, instructional video, adjustment sheet…)
- Entering information into the Maintenance module.
- Visualization of events (alarm, nearing the end of the job…).
- Operation completion time prediction.
The appearance and available functionalities on the terminals are solved by a simple user screen, which is created on a turnkey basis according to the customer’s needs.
