Intelligent Plant Floor Management

A holistic solution to intelligent manufacturing

What is Intelligent Plant Floor Management (iPFM)?

Intelligent Plant Floor Management is lean manufacturing technologies system, which provides full insight into your operation, providing immediate visibility and control of production. Operators have the ability to monitor their production via dashboards and HMIs, allowing them to respond accordingly to downtimes and setbacks.

Application: Heat treatment lines, Forging lines, Axles & wheel-sets line

Intelligent Plant Floor Management

Features of Intelligent Plant Floor Management

  • Heat treatment models
  • Intelligent scheduling
    • Automated plants operation
    • Dynamic work orders
  • Track & Trace (OEE, KPI, WIP, Inventory…)
  • Quality Assurance (reporting)
  • Reporting in real-time and on demand (quality, production, performance, maintenance, energy, CO2 footprint…)
  • Analysis (historical data on production, quality, performance…)
  • Mobile solutions (Tablets, Smart Phones, remote access…)

Heat treatment model

The heat treatment module calculates the heating time for the production batch and sends back this to iPFM to optimize the production schedule and advanced reporting.

The system works according to the monitoring predictor principle. The monitoring module receives as input variables the measured data of the furnace process and continuously calculates the thermal material's current state (temperature + temperature distribution). For this purpose, a physical-mathematical model is used.

Advanced heating Furnace Models help you improve the heating process resulting in high product quality. Inclusively with the increase of energy efficiency, the plant becomes greener, and the production costs are sinking.

Furnace heating curves

Intelligent scheduling

This system creates detailed planning for the line based on the available orders in the internal company transport system. Scheduling is dynamically updated during the production, to appropriately adjust it to any changes (equipment failure, production priority change, transportation system availability). Furthermore, the system suggests how to load the batch by showing the operator where to place the ingot. 

Scheduling based on the production recipes

© ANDRITZ

Track & trace

The tracking and tracing feature records all materials that enter or leave a plant and monitor the resources’ status while being consumed. Furthermore, the actual statuses of equipment are monitored and recorded, improving predictive maintenance. The iPFM tracking feature enables businesses to monitor each production step's performance and improve their processes using aggregated data.

Intelligent Plant Floor Management is an essential tool for companies that strive to lean manufacturing practices, giving them a substantial competitive advantage.

Work in Process (WIP) tracking features tracking each item in production throughout the entire manufacturing process to ensure efficiency, accuracy, and traceability; providing real-time visibility into the flow of materials throughout production.

The inventory aims to view and manage the material inventory tracked within the production plant and stored to the long-term historian. Various inventory classifications may be made within the system, and multiple actions on inventory are possible. iPFM categorizes all material tracked within the plant according to their material classes.

Production track & trace

© ANDRITZ

Quality Assurance (reporting)

Quality reporting KPIs display quality monitoring statistics throughout the manufacturing process. iPFM  tracks statistics on downtimes and defects based on the quality requirements, which are then grouped by code and can be viewed in detail by the operations. Every produced material gets automatically assigned a quality level based on the material processing data analysis.

Collection of the detailed product processing quality data occurs for every step of production. The quality data are stored in a long-term historical database (several years) and may be recalled for analysis anytime.

Measuring Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is a manufacturing best practice. You gain essential insights into systematically improving your manufacturing process by measuring OEE and the underlying losses. With the OEE metrics you can  identify losses, benchmarking progress, and improve the productivity of manufacturing equipment.

Quality report

© ANDRITZ

                                                    OEE = Availability x Performance x Quality

- 100% Quality              (only Good Parts)
- 100% Performance     (as fast as possible)
- 100% Availability        (no Downtime)

Benefits

  • Consistent (Increase) product quality with advanced furnace models

  • Effective operation with intelligent scheduling system

  • Track your most important production metrics

  • Receive instant alerts and notifications

  • Analyze and reduce production bottlenecks

  • Eliminate unplanned downtime

  • Standardize jobs and benchmark data

  • Reduce costs and increase production capacity

  • Improve CO2 footprint and reduce energy consumption

success-uddeholm-IPFM_metals

Success story - Fully automated heat treatment line

Over 72 hour of autonomous operation (without any involvement from personnel)

Furnace capacity: 3 - 25 ton

Temp. range: 500°C- 1100°C

Heat-up gradient 80°C

Max. 60 sec. from furnace to WQ

Over 24 different quenching programs