Mingo Smart Factory customers have often found success through benefits that go beyond the expected productivity results.
The benefits of improved manufacturing productivity can extend far beyond the bottom line. These benefits lead to unexpected positive outcomes for the business, its employees, and their customers.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines an X Factor as a circumstance, quality or person that has a strong but unpredictable influence. Here at Mingo, we like to call these the Mingo X Factor benefits.
Get notified of problems as they happen with mobile alerts
Automatic label creation to improve accuracy and reduce shipping mistakes
Quality tracking and task management to reduce shift changeovers
Use the dashboard to understand each factory's actual cycle time
Predictive maintenance to fix machines before they break
A/B test new vendors to determine performance before committing
Identify underperforming materials and adjust process to maximize output
Red on the dashboard is an opportunity for growth
Mingo Smart Factory customers monitor plant operations through the mobile app. One of Mingo’s mold injection customers recently used the app for more than productivity monitoring.
A machine was flagged for quality issues in the finished product. The manager tagged the machine as down in the Mingo Smart Factory production monitoring system. Then logged out on Friday and went home for a restful weekend.
The manager received a mobile alert on Saturday morning that the machine had been turned on by the weekend crew. He was able to quickly contact the shift manager to turn the machine back off.
This move prevented thousands of dollars of defective product. Without the app, they would have never known that the machine had been accidentally incorporated into the weekend’s line production.
The Mingo Smart Factory Integration:
Prior to Mingo Smart Factory, Lyons Blow Molding would pre-print labels at the beginning of a shift, then attach them to the product when it was boxed and ready to ship. Labels would occasionally get assigned to the wrong line or be on the right line but applied to the wrong parts. This caused inventory errors and unhappy customers.
Creating a label is now automated as part of the production process. Mingo Smart Factory runs a script at the end of a completed job to labeling software that Lyons Blow Molding was already using. A label is printed and immediately placed on the correct box.
The Mingo Smart Factory Integration:
Some manufacturing companies still use paper and Excel to record their figures. A painting supply company used to keep their quality records in a series of notebooks. It then took time and effort to get the information transferred into a format like Excel for analysis. With Mingo Smart Factory, the information can be input via tablet and accessed in real time. Now they can track quality issues as they happen and not try to overcorrect an issue that crept up two weeks and fourteen orders ago.
Production planning is another perk that Mingo Smart Factory customers enjoy. When analyzing their shift change productivity, this same client realized that their Morning Shift was sometimes delayed for up to two hours. The reason: the operators were trying to figure out what jobs/parts had been run on the overnight shift before managers were in the office for the day. They needed to know which lines were a priority and how many parts were still needed to be produced.
With Mingo, production schedules can be sent directly to the operators so they always know what they are working on and quantity remaining during a shift change.
The Mingo Smart Factory Integration:
The Cycle Time Formula is an essential manufacturing KPI to understand in manufacturing. It is used by ERP and MES systems for scheduling, purchasing and production costing.
Cycle time is a contentious topic, not because it doesn’t provide value to manufacturers, but because the definition of cycle time is widely debated. Every manufacturer defines and measures it differently, adding to the confusing nature of applying cycle time from one company to another.
Lincoln Manufacturing discovered the cycle times they were using to plan, cost, and quote their parts were off by as much as 40%. They were able to adjust their numbers to gain an understanding of their true capacity, actual cost, and which parts were actually profitable.
Lyons Blow Molding also found that their cycle times, while using the industry standard, were not accurately reflecting what they were actually doing. They revised their cycle times to improve cost and scheduling.
A few of the most common measurements that customers can find in manufacturing analytics systems like Mingo Smart Factory include:
For most manufacturers, there isn’t just one software solution used in the plant. Production often has one solution like Mingo Smart Factory to increase efficiencies and improve performance, while maintenance has another software solution to plan, monitor, and optimize maintenance activities. The need for each system to talk to the other is critical.
One of the things that Mingo Smart Factory customers love most about the software is the ability to capture data beyond counts and downtimes. H&T Waterbury uses Mingo Smart Factory to get a better understanding of when machines need maintenance – before they break – using temperature and vibration data.
“It’s like car maintenance,” Spencer Cushman, VP of Operations at H&T Waterbury, explains, “Whether it’s 6 months or 5,000 miles, it’s the same idea with our machines and we can use [Mingo and Fiix] in combination.”
In Fiix, the maintenance team can schedule maintenance activities, track inventory, and maintain workflow based on the trends, reporting and analysis seen in the Mingo dashboard.
The Mingo & Fiix integration:
One of Mingo Smart Factory’s cannabis customers was interested in sourcing their labels from a new supplier. They ran an A/B test to trial run the performance with the new vendor. Using the Mingo dashboard, they were able to determine that the performance and availability of their production lines were negatively impacted by the new labels. This customer subsequently decided not to change vendors.
Without MingoSmart Factory, they would have switched vendors and suffered significant production and quality issues due to the lower quality label.
“If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.”
One of Mingo Smart Factory’s customers produces industrial adhesives worldwide. Using the Mingo dashboard, they noticed a significant performance drop off for a specific material in their mixing department. They ran baseline data for 3-4 months to show how much this specific material was underperforming their expected performance metrics.
After using data to identify the issue with this high volume material, they implemented a targeted process improvement, and have improved their performance by 18%.
Without Mingo Smart Factory, they would not have identified the performance issue or known how to adjust their process to maximize output.
With Mingo Smart Factory’s dashboard, everyone can view the manufacturing analytics to see the plant’s efficiency, availability and performance cost. If the issue is availability, then supervisors can see the production monitoring system data in a visual format and make adjustments in real time to shift staff to be more available throughout the shift so that orders can be run as fast or faster than was quoted to the customers.
While green is synonymous with good, seeing areas of red is not always a bad thing either. Red highlights areas of continuous improvement and potential for growth and opportunity. Mingo Smart Factory helps managers shape the narrative so they have the tools needed to explain the compelling intent behind the transformation.
When the owner of Ice Industries emailed Director of Operations Bennett Bishop about the status of a line, Mr. Bishop was able to go into the Mingo Smart Factory dashboard to pull the actual production numbers from the past two months. Some quick analysis revealed that while the OEE showed that the quality and performance was good, the 30-60% availability was dragging down the metrics.
One of Mingo Smart Factory’s newest customers discovered that the #1 cause of downtime was a line that was waiting for a forklift operator to deliver materials.
The Mingo Smart Factory Integration:
Mingo Smart Factory’s manufacturing productivity software provides real-time visibility into the production process, allowing teams to quickly identify and resolve issues that may cause downtime.
Significantly increase plant productivity with consumer packaged goods software. Monitor production, solve problems, hit targets, and deliver on time to customers.
Operators, supervisors, and managers often don’t know about problems on the floor until it’s too late. With Mingo Smart Factory, you’re able to automatically collect and measure OEE, keeping tabs on how the plant is performing.
Every minute a machine isn’t running represents a lost opportunity. With Mingo Smart Factory, you know when a machine goes down, and for how long, and based on the data, you can identify a plan for corrective action.
Mingo Smart Factory reps aren’t just sales guys. Our team features extremely knowledgable people with experience in manufacturing who can help you formulate a custom solution for your company.
Use the meeting calendar to request a personalized walk-through with an expert at a time that works for you.
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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