IMPROVING TURNS IN MACHINE BUILDING
Shishir Rege*
Management at turnkey automation systems providers are always seeking ways to improve production efficiencies on the manufacturing floor. The challenge is to keep up with sales growth and deliver systems on time, while maintaining the same amount of resources.
M
achine turns or simply ‘turns’ is a very powerful measure of productivity for turnkey automation systems providers. Simply put, turns measure how many machines can be built in a year in the same space with the same amount of resources. For example, if a 10,000 m2 facility can produce five machines simultaneously, then in other words, production of one machine takes up 2000 m2. If each machine takes four weeks of production time, then the same 2000 m2 could produce about 13 machines in a year (assuming 365 days of operations for simplicity of calculation). Therefore, the machine turns of this space is 13. The total production capacity of the manufacturing floor would be 65 machines a year. Now, if the machine builder decides to increase production to keep up with growing sales, there are two options: add facilities in multiples of 2000 m2, maintaining the same turns on the floor, or increase turns with existing resources. If this machine builder can save four days per machine it would improve turns from 13 to 15, making the facility 15% more productive, compared to investing more capital and resources for an additional 2000 m2 to achieve 20% more productivity. The relationship between turns and efficiency can be seen in Figure 1.
18 WHAT'S NEW IN PROCESS TECHNOLOGY - OCTOBER 2015
The concept of turns is not new and neither is the concept of process improvement. There is a plethora of knowledge on improving manufacturing efficiencies — from adopting newer technologies and improving internal processes through lean manufacturing initiatives like six-sigma to building sustainable supplier relations for just-in-time production. But what is often overlooked or ignored as an area of efficiency improvement is the controls architecture. Controls architectures, being the integral part of the system or machine, are usually not thought to be an area for process improvement. Of course, as with any process improvement initiative, cross-functional teams are necessary. In this case, engineering and production play an important role.
Cabinet-mount philosophy versus machinemount philosophy The traditional (and most prevalent) approach to managing lowvoltage sensors and actuators on a machine is based on a centralised control strategy — also known as cabinet-mount philosophy. In this approach, while sensors, valves and other electromechanical devices are out on the machine, the wires controlling their actions
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