Learn how H&T Waterbury reduced micro stoppages by 71%, drove continuous improvement projects, all based on data collected from the floor.
With Mingo, H&T Waterbury was able to find small problems throughout the plant, that when corrected, led to big productivity gains.
Unplanned shortstops in the high volume, high-speed facility were known to cause scrap, unplanned overtime, and increased costs downstream, but how often these unplanned downtime events occurred was unknown.
“Mingo helped us realize that our small micro stoppage problem was actually a bigger problem than we anticipated,” Matt Hill, Operations Improvement Coordinator at H&T said.
Before working with Mingo Smart Factory, H&T was manually entering data, and there was a lot of opportunity for mistakes. It didn’t provide the ability to find and solve problems, quickly and efficiently.
By automating data collection, setting up timely reports, and more time for value-added tasks, the team at H&T is able to find, diagnose, and solve problems quickly.
“Now, we have before and after snapshots of what happened and what’s happening now,” Matt said.
With Mingo Smart Factory, management receives daily production reports at the end of every day as well as a weekly report at the close of the Saturday shift.
“Also, there’s a scoreboard throughout the company, in the offices, on the floor, so everyone sees where we are with the machines in addition to emailed reports,” Matt said.
The transparency and effectiveness of keeping everyone in the loop have created a culture of communication and teamwork.
Built by people who know manufacturing, Mingo provides the 21st century “Smart Factory” experience that manufacturers need to grow in a modern environment. See how it can help you drive revenue.
I can now nail down to the day and to the hour when a trend started because of Mingo. We can take action to either fix or imitate. We now have the foundation to match current trend data with historical data to match up with our corrective action.
H&T Waterbury
“I’ve been working with data and solving problems for the last 8 years, but never had anything in a place like Mingo,” Matt said. “Having Mingo started something we didn’t know before; all of the problems we thought were small problems actually weren’t.”
With real-time, tangible data, Matt and his team were able to implement corrective action to fix the problems affecting production, monitor the actions taken using alerts, and use the data going forward to monitor the effectiveness of those changes. Alerts helped H&T Waterbury monitor the effectiveness of changes made.
“The alerts we have are fantastic and have helped us tremendously over the past few months,” he said.
For the longest time, there was a problem with one of the machines that they just couldn’t figure out how to solve. While they’ve since solved the problem, which turned out to be a simple solution, alerts and manufacturing insights emails helped to solve it.
“We would monitor on Mingo to find out if the things we were doing were actually working, and it helped me not wake up at 2 in the morning to find out if the machine is running or not. I’d know of any problems before I went to bed.”
The data helps H&T know where they stand.
“What gets tracked, gets improved and now we have a much better understanding of our stoppages and the frequency of stoppages.”
As manufacturers know, improvement never stops, but as H&T learned, data can help to increase efficiency, reduce scrap, increase output, and eliminate micro stoppages and downtime on the floor.
“When you have a data-driven approach, you tend to work better as a team, too, because it’s fact and not opinion,” Matt added.
“Mingo was the simplest and most effective, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who asks,” he said and added, “You’d be surprised what the little bits add up to – big stoppages and lots of scrap.”
Built by people who know manufacturing, Mingo Smart Factory provides the 21st century “Smart Factory” experience that manufacturers need to grow in a modern environment. See how it can help you drive revenue.
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