Morgan Olson is a leading walk-in van body manufacturer based in North America. Historically, it relied on a paper-based approach for tracking utilization, resulting in inaccurate, delayed data that was time-consuming to collect, compile, and analyze. This hindered decision-making and left the team blind to capacity utilization opportunities.
With little idea of how much capacity was available on the shop floor, the company deployed MachineMetrics to automatically capture machine data, report the true capacity of the plant, and provide the foundation for numerous other continuous improvement initiatives.
Real-time production data and increased visibility enhanced decision-making and moved the company from a paper-based approach to automatically collecting and analyzing production data with astounding results.
Understanding machine asset capacity was deemed a top priority for Morgan Olson’s yearly Kaizen initiatives. Its manual, paper-based approach to data capture left teams essentially blind to available capacity.
Different plants were requesting more capital resources to buy machines, but with limited, error-prone, manual data, there was no objective way to evaluate and justify the investment. The company ran three shifts, and the manual approach made it impossible to determine machine utilization accurately.
Morgan Olson was also capacity-constrained and outsourcing increasing amounts of production. Managing this outsourced portion of manufacturing was cost prohibitive and often compromised the company’s high-quality standards.
MachineMetrics quickly demonstrated that Morgan Olson could automatically capture key metrics and eliminate the need for manual data collection. The platform allowed teams to quantify and document improvements in asset utilization, which quickly justified the company’s investment in MachineMetrics.
The implementation process was simple and fast. The MachineMetrics platform was connected to all machine assets. Like many manufacturers, Morgan Olson has a wide range and variety of machine assets. One key differentiator of MachineMetrics is its ability to connect to and capture data from any machine asset regardless of OEM, make, model, or age.
Tablets are placed at machines, giving operators an interface to provide contextual information that complements machine data, such as downtime categorizations and the rejection of scrap parts.
Morgan Olson’s operators believe that MachineMetrics allows them to control their destiny and performance. Real-time data shows them where they stand at any given time, and they’re alerted to any problems quickly. They can also automate many processes using MachineMetrics’ notifications and workflows.
Morgan Olson’s management team quickly realized that a significant benefit of MachineMetrics was its ability to expose available capacity. This reduced the need for additional CapEx investment and the amount of production sent to vendors. MachineMetrics’ real-time data and insights have also driven improvement initiatives across the operation.
By revealing and exploiting hidden capacity, rather than purchasing new machines, Morgan Olson saved over $600,000 in CapEx. It has also realized an increase in equipment utilization by 20% and believes this will continue to improve as processes are optimized using MachineMetrics’ production and condition monitoring.
Morgan Olson
Denis Mursoi, Continuous Improvement Manager
Vending, parcel delivery, food, newspaper, textile rentals
Punch machines, Brake machines
Sturgis, MI
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