In any manufacturing operation machinery plays a very important role. Only through the continuous progress in technology, large scale and customized manufacturing could ever become possible.
Since the industrial revolution, where assembly lines and conveyor belts transformed manufacturing from a customized and small scale endeavor to a large scale and mass production activity, process equipment has come a long way.
Modern manufacturing plants rely heavily on process equipment, which are fully automated and perform operations with high accuracy, sometimes impossible for any human to perform. Modern robots may assemble an entire vehicle in fraction of the time it would take say 30-40 years back.
Having said that, the role of humans in the process is more critical now than ever, as they are responsible for making sure that the automated equipment is well maintained, calibrated and is performing to deliver required quality. The need of the hour for today's highly automated plants is better equipment management to deliver correct quality consistently.
Over the past few articles in our Quality Is Everyone's Business series we have established that MES applications are the best when it comes to housing a Quality Management System. Today we will explore the possibilities of integrating the Equipment Management module along with the MES.
MES applications right from their introduction have had the ability to interact with process equipment, measure the relevant process metrics and schedule production activities. Two major aspects of managing process equipment would be:
- to ensure that the equipment is well maintained, i.e. preventive and scheduled maintenance occurs as required and scheduled respectively,
- to ensure all process equipment is calibrated to meet the set standards of production.
For more information about Equipment Excellence click here to read the complete blog post http://goo.gl/iUwsQt.
Since the industrial revolution, where assembly lines and conveyor belts transformed manufacturing from a customized and small scale endeavor to a large scale and mass production activity, process equipment has come a long way.
Modern manufacturing plants rely heavily on process equipment, which are fully automated and perform operations with high accuracy, sometimes impossible for any human to perform. Modern robots may assemble an entire vehicle in fraction of the time it would take say 30-40 years back.
Having said that, the role of humans in the process is more critical now than ever, as they are responsible for making sure that the automated equipment is well maintained, calibrated and is performing to deliver required quality. The need of the hour for today's highly automated plants is better equipment management to deliver correct quality consistently.
Over the past few articles in our Quality Is Everyone's Business series we have established that MES applications are the best when it comes to housing a Quality Management System. Today we will explore the possibilities of integrating the Equipment Management module along with the MES.
MES applications right from their introduction have had the ability to interact with process equipment, measure the relevant process metrics and schedule production activities. Two major aspects of managing process equipment would be:
- to ensure that the equipment is well maintained, i.e. preventive and scheduled maintenance occurs as required and scheduled respectively,
- to ensure all process equipment is calibrated to meet the set standards of production.
For more information about Equipment Excellence click here to read the complete blog post http://goo.gl/iUwsQt.
