The Process manufacturing sector has been way ahead of the rest of manufacturing in adopting and using efficiency metrics, all for a good reason.   Discrete manufacturing has not been able to adopt metrics easily in the past and we now have a cost effective solution that can be of huge advantage to companies. 

The simple logic here is the Process manufacturing sector, characterized by chemical changes in product often in a continuous environment  (eg. Refinery), is very capital intensive using process control MES systems that capture all this information, so it is then easy to report on the metrics.  Typically multi-million dollar project implementations, all part of the initial machine deployment.

Discrete (CNC and many other types) on the other hand, which are characterized by making individual parts, have not needed the sophisticated MES controls and could not justify the very expensive implementations of $10,000 to $millions per machine, so they have not done much in the OEE metric area.  Up until now, and primarily because of our product, we have brought the price point down to the $4,000 per machine level - which is now cost effective and justifiable.  The benefits of 20% or more productivity (our customers say it is much more) pay for this system very quickly.

And we can make this an "Operator-less" input - meaning we pick up signals right from the machine and there is no need for an operator to give some input, unless required for reject or downtime reason codes.  We are hearing from our customers that this is very important - you can just imagine all the reasons.  Many ERP and other solutions just about all require operator input (bar-code scanning etc.) and this is old thinking and often problematic with operator productivity, errors and even hand writing on a clipboard for entry days later.  Our real-time, direct connection is most accurate and saves  much labor time - often justifying the hard direct expense in itself, let alone the benefits of increased efficiency, lower product costs and competitive advantage.

There is always interesting new benefits of OEE from a customer perspective especially as it relates to a positive experience for operators and people on the shop floor.  A recent interview dug up these golden nuggets:
“We now have a tool to communicate to the people on the shop floor that our performance can improve.”
"The OEE data provided improves human as well as machine-to-machine communications."
"We believe we can use Memex data to motivate employees with a shared understanding of how we can be more productive, and that’s what it’s all about.”
"Our biggest differentiator is productivity and OEE helps us identify areas to improve our efficiency."
"Machines are islands of unconnected information – like having a group of office PCs, each with different software – now we can network machines together, just like networking an office."
“We had passive OEE with manual clip boards and now we have active OEE, visible in the plant.”
"The key to better productivity is not just to track performance, but to act on problems in real-time.”
"Machine connectivity unites the islands of machine automation, establishing a fully-connected, enterprise-wide manufacturing nervous system that gives real-time visibility of production and the ability to adapt and control each machine."
“Customers can see and believe in what we’re doing to improve on time delivery because we have traceability of machine operations through OEE."

As an international company, Memex sells its products all around the world.

See us at the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago, September 13-18, 2010, booth E-3868.