MachineMetrics Offers Free Remote Monitoring Solutions to Manufacturers Impacted by COVID-19

By Bill Bither, CEO and Co-Founder at MachineMetrics

While some manufacturers have been forced to change strategies temporarily in this unprecedented time, others have a need to double down on what they do best.

A massive effort is currently under way to enable existing U.S. manufacturing and supply chain capabilities to support the production of essential supplies needed to treat COVID-19 patients. These lifesaving devices often require the coordination of more than 100 manufacturers and suppliers, including places struggling to respond to coronavirus themselves.

MachineMetrics, an AWS Partner Network (APN) Advanced Technology Partner with the AWS Industrial Software Competency, is committed to supporting front-line workers on the manufacturing floor and in the medical field. By enabling mobile workers, industrial companies are better able to ensure the safety of their employees while continuing to serve their own customers.

Powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), MachineMetrics’ Industrial IoT platform measures and analyzes the performance of thousands of machines across global factories. We have worked with AWS to provide manufacturers with a program to support the need to enable social distancing and remote work via digital apps.

At this critical moment, we are offering free access to MachineMetrics to any manufacturer involved with the production of ventilator parts, test equipment, protective equipment, or any COVID-19 treatment-related manufacturing.

MachineMetrics currently supports a number of top precision component and medical device manufacturers in the world. The platform is plug-and-play, with no onsite setup required, so any manufacturer can install it themselves. Most modern equipment can be connected within minutes.

We are also offering manufacturing consulting services free of charge. The MachineMetrics customer solutions team has firsthand experience leading digital transformations in manufacturing across industry, including regulated medical device and precision component environments.

Our team will partner with you to support training, use case consultation, and continuous improvement activities needed to ramp production fast and reliably. We can also help companies produce new products, increase production volumes, and bring therapies faster to market.

Let’s look at several use cases for remote work and social distancing for manufacturers.

Monitor Production from Anywhere

Any manufacturer can leverage the MachineMetrics platform and its digital apps designed to enable social distancing and remote work.

Whether you are social distancing or simply working away from the manufacturing floor, use the real-time visibility in MachineMetrics to understand what’s happening in your shop from anywhere.

Using any internet-capable device, views such as the Current Shift Dashboard and Production Report allow you to remotely monitor the progress of your factory floor. You can also invite additional employees to access your data remotely at no additional cost.

Enhance Communication

Timely communication of critical information is always important on the shop floor, but the importance will be magnified as daily routines are impacted. Consider developing an internal strategy for using notifications to your advantage. There’s no better time than now to start enabling real-time notifications triggered by what’s actually happening on the factory floor.

With MachineMetrics, you have the ability to send notifications for significant utilization drops, specific machine downtimes occurring, individual alarms, and more.

Make Informed Scheduling and Staffing Changes

Balancing customer needs with staffing considerations will be key in the coming weeks. Having the data needed to staff strategically is an important advantage for organizations.

By using key data points, such as week-over-week machine utilization or critical job performance, manufacturers can make informed scheduling and staffing decisions. Historical data can also be leveraged to quantify the impact current conditions are having on your business and make projections about the future.

Maximize Lights-Out Capabilities

Although not everyone has the ability to do lights-out manufacturing, if you have invested in robotics, palletized machines, bar feeders, and other automation, now is the time to leverage them to their fullest.

Running lights-out will help you keep your critical jobs running while spacing out employees tending machines to mitigate risk.

Using MachineMetrics’ Operator Insight feature, you can see operators signing in while tending machines. Set up monitors with notifications for when you bar feeder alarms, or when the machine requires lubrication.

You can also be alerted about any critical alarms throughput while the machine is unmanned, and respond to any critical issues or alarms quickly.

Remote Machine Maintenance and Service

MachineMetrics’ Remote Service feature enables equipment providers and service teams to help you diagnose and resolve machine issues without having to step foot in your facility.

The historical and real-time machine data collected allows equipment manufacturers to gain insight into customers’ equipment health and condition, deliver early warning of potential equipment failures, highlight elevated risk areas that lead to machine downtime, or even determine to take preventative action before it impacts your machine performance.

Summary

Thoughtful management of people and resources, and using data to make good decisions, is critical in the COVID-19 environment.

There will be a lot for manufacturers to balance in the coming weeks, including customer needs, supply chain challenges, staffing considerations. Having a strategy to leverage data to aid in decision-making is key.

MachineMetrics is focused on providing manufacturers with the data they need to make the best decisions possible in this unprecedented time. By enabling mobile workers, industrial companies are better able to ensure the safety of their workers while continuing to serve customers.

Learn more about our COVID-19 Response Program, and check out the MachineMetrics blog as our data science team reports on the impact of COVID-19 on the manufacturing industry.

The content and opinions in this blog are those of the third party author and AWS is not responsible for the content or accuracy of this post.

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MachineMetrics – APN Partner Spotlight

MachineMetrics is an AWS Industrial Software Competency Partner. Its Industrial IoT platform measures and analyzes the performance of thousands of machines across global factories.

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