Improve Job Tracking With Production Data
In today’s online all the time world, people have much higher expectations for keeping track of their parts during manufacturing than they did ten years ago. This is even more true in 2023 after the supply chain disruptions which still persist. While many companies choose to have a “you’ll get it when you get it” approach, we believe there is a huge opportunity for companies who want to make an impact by improving communications, increasing transparency, and using the information they are tracking internally to build stronger relationships with their customers.
All the examples outlined below are fully secure. Each integration lets manage customer access and accounts so that your customers only see the information that’s relevant to them. However, as the information provider, your company has administrator access to view any information across the systems.
Job Tracking in Heat Treatment
Job tracking can be a huge boost to customer communication in the Heat Treatment industry. Heat treatment may sound unfamiliar to some people, but many common items contain heat treated components. Everyday examples include tools brazed together in a furnace, knives that have been hardened and tempered. Additionally, many parts in cars, trucks, and airplanes, components in the transformers used to deliver electricity to everyone’s homes, and even nuclear reactors where the shells undergo very intensive heat treatment operations.
Heat treatment is also an industry where automation can play a big role. Automation can help make operators’ jobs easier by controlling furnaces, monitoring the process, and generating alarms. It can also collect data about each production run for use in future analysis, reports, and recipe development/management. Many heat treatment processes have typically been controlled using basic electrical components, however it’s easy to upgrade them to PLC and SCADA systems to control furnaces and conveyance systems with very precise control capabilities. This approach helps maintain tolerances for various heat treatment specifications—even significantly narrowing the operating temperature spread of a run. It can also enable operators to build and utilize recipes for various parts and operations to ensure consistency across every batch produced on any given piece of equipment.
Using a tool like Ignition from Inductive Automation will let you solve two problems at once. You can build a robust customer facing system with a typical web-based interface as well as a dedicated Mobile App for enhanced customer service and communication capabilities. At the same time, you can leverage the power of Ignition on the plant floor to give your operators better visibility and control of your processes—while also leveraging mobile app functionality for alarms and alerts.
Advanced Data Collection and Reporting Using Ignition
Using the Heat Treatment use-case for this post, let’s examine the five major benefits of using Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and a SCADA Platform like Ignition from Inductive Automation as part of an overall Heat Treat operation. Please keep in mind that this is not an “all or nothing” proposition, Corso Systems can help you implement a combination of these suggestions, come up with new ones, or do them all and add to the list over time! These are simply ideas we have implemented and seen work across many different industries, including and especially Heat Treatment:
ERP Information Integration
When focused on a customer-first integration strategy, the first major integration is to pull data from your ERP System into your SCADA System. This can be as simple as pulling across open orders and allowing operators to choose what they want to run and when. Or it can be as complex as you like, incorporating overall production scheduling optimizations and giving operators step by step instructions on every batch.
When a batch is started on any piece of equipment, you can track the start/stop time of the run, all of the temperatures, pressures, flows, readings from any other sensors on a furnace, which operator ran the parts, when the parts were quenched (if necessary), and for how long. You can even incorporate images and quality control data once the parts have been inspected.
ERP information helps your operators know what to make and when—and it combines with Recipe Management to streamline their workflow. For the customer side, you will now have similar information to what’s in a typical job tracking application with the addition of production data to the mix.
Recipe Management and Lot Number Tracking
In addition to knowing what is coming down the pipe from the production schedulers, you can utilize recipes for your parts. Operators will no longer need to look up information and enter data manually. Recipe management can even be fully automated when the recipe is selected based on the part to be run. In that case, the operator only needs to verify the settings and hit the start button. Assuming you do a preheat operation at the beginning of a shift or when moving from one temperature range to another, this process can also be completely automatic. For operations that shut down overnight, this automated approach can increase overall throughput if you start the preheating operations before the main shift begins.
Management can input and control the recipes, so you can ensure that the operators will run the same settings every time. Any deviations from the recipe will be tracked so you can see if anyone changed a value during the run. You can also easily use production data from each run to compare overall performance of the equipment over time.
This makes your operator’s lives easier, reduces chance for input errors, and increases consistency across batches and staff. It gives your customers the peace of mind and proof your process is consistent every time.
Production Data Historization
Once online, the Ignition SCADA system will collect data from any sensors you have hooked up for as long as you would like to store data. To give customers full visibility into their parts, you can create a report by using the information from when batches are started and stopped—and pulling this data from the historian. Any alarms triggered during the run will be collected and available for use in reports and future engineering analysis. You can even track operator interactions with the system to monitor for changes to any values, including when they acknowledge alarms. This information can be very useful when training new operators as well by allowing them to run simulated batches. Their results can be compared to real historical data without putting costly customer material at risk.
Data historization helps your operators track batches over time, and lets everyone see how a given batch is running in real-time. It gives increased transparency to your customers and lets you demonstrate your capabilities with the receipts to back up your performance.
Advanced Production Reports and Images
Typical production reports include a header including part information, pre- and post-heat treat specifications, recipe information including soak times, temperatures, time within temperature ranges, quench information, atmosphere or vacuum pressure settings, and run start/end times. If you want to calculate overall heating or cooling rates for more involved processes, this is easy to do with all of the historical data collected.
A trend of the relevant readings during the run usually follows the header. Actual temperatures, gas or electric usage for heating elements, speeds and feeds for any pumps or gases used along with conveyance speeds, and any pressures you might be measuring.
After the trends section, you can automatically import images of the relevant parts. They can be normal images from a phone or digital camera, or images from a FLIR or other thermal camera if you are using them in your process.
Advanced production reports provide better internal documentation with real-time process data. These well designed, automatically-generated reports are useful for your customers and staff.
Quality Control Information and Furnace Calibrations
Once you have completed a batch and the parts are sent off to quality control, there’s another opportunity to flag parts that have moved through the process. You can also update your customer with the status of their order as it moves through quality control.
Quality control sample and test results (including instrument calibrations) can give your customers even more peace of mind. In heat treatment, this information commonly includes furnace thermocouple calibrations and offsets. By using a PLC for automated control, you can even incorporate offsets into the PLC program, and/or as part of the overall recipe if you find you need to use different thermocouples for different parts. If you run something very complicated like in the Nuclear world you can even track thermocouple lot numbers along with each batch for even more transparency.
In addition to production data, operator logs, pictures of parts, and any other relevant information you can build a report package with quality control reports automatically incorporated in a single PDF file your customers can access. Based on how integrated you want to be even throwing a customer logo onto the report is very easy to do. Sometimes it is the small touches that will go a long way.
Quality control information and furnace calibration data closes the loop on the operations side for a complete picture of every batch. This is a very powerful tool for your customer service team who can now deliver all of the relevant information when a customer wants to see it.
Mobile App Integrations for Notifications and Information Access Any Time, Any Place
In addition to more detailed reports, within Ignition Corso Systems can integrate all of the relevant data into a mobile application for your customers—while still using Ignition’s native app on the operations side for your operators and plant floor staff. This gives your company a presence on the relevant app stores (typically iOS and Android), and a way to keep in contact with your customers directly on a device they will always have in their pocket. With these apps you can also notify them with any relevant information very quickly. Of course, you can still use any existing systems with email integration or a website integration, this is simply another option for communicating and connecting with your customers.
If desired, we can even build in a live chat feature in the app allowing customers to ask questions or leave notes on various items right through the app. These messages can then be forwarded directly to your customer service staff for quick turnaround.
Mobile App Integration With Ignition
Corso Systems has developed and integrated custom mobile applications with data from Ignition and ERP Systems many times before. Basically, this functionality will give you your own app on the app stores which anyone can install on their phones. And, just like a job tracking website, your customers can set up an account, log in, and access any information you make available to them. You may choose to display typical job tracking operations like status, PO information, location, and part information, or you also have the option to open up access to watch a batch happening in real time if you wanted to make that available. Once the system is integrated and data is being collected, you could easily give customers read-only access for watching a batch in real-time—just as if they were standing at the machine. While you may not want or need that level of transparency, it is possible with Ignition.
Ignition mobile apps operate just as you would expect any mobile app to work. It’s responsive, rotates when you rotate your phone, and has familiar navigation interactions.
Along with a dedicated customer-facing mobile app, you can also leverage the Ignition mobile app to access your operations information if you are connected to the network. This allows you to see the plant floor as if you were an operator—though it can be read-only so you aren’t changing setpoints without being at the equipment in question.
Report Integration and Video (Also possible without Mobile App using a typical web interface)
As customer batches are completed, and reports are generated (for regular production information to start, then images, and quality control information when it becomes available), you can give customers a direct link to their reports. They can access these reports to see what information is available, and get an update when more pieces come in, or when the report is complete.
If you are using images in the report, they will be part of the PDF file. However, if you wanted to take it one step further you could even add video of various production operations and include video clips for any batches the customer is viewing to give them more insight into a particular run.
Push Notifications
One exciting benefit of using a dedicated mobile app is the ability to leverage push notifications. Now, you send a notification from your app’s backend to alert a user (or all of the users) at a company when a particular event or events happen. For job tracking, this might be status updates, or if you have a communication integration it would let them know a reply has been sent.
All of this can be set up per company, and per user allowing them to customize which notifications they want to receive, if any, and when.
This approach can also be applied to the operations side. If there is an operator login on a phone, they can receive push notifications for alarms, any relevant batch information requiring their attention, or even overall company communications.
Wrapping Up
With a tool like Ignition along with automated control of furnace equipment—Honeywell controllers or PLCs—you will have a massive advantage on two fronts: standardizing and streamlining operations, and increased customer service support for job tracking and reporting.
Corso Systems has helped many customers in the Heat Treatment world integrate Ignition with their equipment. We see a huge opportunity to help companies gain an edge in their markets through enhanced customer service capabilities and communication using modern technology.
