The contractor was previously collecting process control data on line, but not performing SPC on the machined parts.  “It became clear that they needed to start quantifying the parts on the floor and improving their reporting requirements to the government,” says Bob Weber, President of the industrial automation system integration company.  The scope of the project requires real-time status alarms and messaging, assignable cause documentation, operator entry via keypad and digital gages and will eventually encompass 48 workstations.

“Before, their SPC efforts involved a two-day turnaround,” notes Weber.  “The operator wrote numbers on a sheet and sent it up to the SPC engineer who entered it manually into an SPC program and plotted the charts.  If they were making bad parts, they didn’t find out about it until two days later.”

Without physically being on-site, Weber is serving as project pointman while the contractor finalizes supervisory assignments.  In his St. Louis office 850 miles away, Weber uses his internet browser to connect to a Citrix^® server on the contractor’s Windows^® NT network.  There, he monitors production activity as it actually takes place.  “I can look at the exact same conditions their operators are seeing,” he says.  “When a process alarm turns red, the operators and I can investigate the condition simultaneously, and I can step them through the adjustments they need to make.”

“The installation was straightforward.  We got it on the server immediately and sat right down at one of the PCs and started configuring the data files.  I’ve only been working with the basic software functions for two to four weeks, but I have a feeling the software is far more powerful than we imagined.  There are many capabilities we want to take advantage of, but we already consider the project a success.  Because right now operators on the production floor can see the machines that are in, the machines that are out, and they have real-time feedback that they didn’t have six weeks ago,” concludes Weber.