Engineers at Mahle North America’s Murfreesboro, Tenn., plant knew that manually collecting data from the facility’s 49 injection molding machines was an inefficient method to gather information and create production reports. Supervisors and production team leaders were spending too many hours recording data and entering it into spreadsheets. The process also was open to errors.
Matt Eargle, an industrial engineer with Mahle NA, set out to fix the problem. He researched real-time data-collection systems to automate the process, hoping to put the company in a better position to participate in Industry 4.0 with systems that would help his team adjust production to meet goals.
“I wanted to find a better data-collection solution for the injection molding department and to move toward adopting Industry 4.0,” Eargle said. “I researched half a dozen supplier systems, narrowed down the list, and arranged to meet with Smart Attend during NPE 2018 in Orlando.”
Smart Attend provides a remote-monitoring system that offers smart analytics and can communicate worldwide. It sends real-time information wirelessly, provides instant access to production information and can be configured to work with any automated production cell. Smart Attend, a subsidiary of Axiom Group Inc., a Canadian-based plastics processor with facilities in Canada and Mexico, makes the system’s hardware and software, also called Smart Attend.
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