A new generation of engineers and skilled trades people are always taking on brand-new jobs. And the jobs themselves keep evolving as tasks become automated.
Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) are shifting the ways in which workers approach their jobs. These systems offer a view of the factory floor, including insights into equipment performance. It also collects data, which is important for recreating processes.
Andrew Robling, principal marketing manager with Epicor, has seen the evolution of manufacturing, from manual processes to automated ones.
Robling started his career while he was still in college, working at a plastic injection molding plant that served the automotive industry.
“When I was going to college and doing my job at the plastic injection molding plant, there was very little guidance,” Robling told Control Engineering in an exclusive interview. “There might’ve been some kind of an instruction that was on a piece of paper. I might have glanced at it occasionally to remind myself of the steps that I needed to do to learn my job, but that might’ve been back in the office. I might have had that. There’s times where I kind of felt lost out on the shop floor about that next thing I needed to do, so tools like Epicor Connected Process Control, I think, are very helpful. They have this aspect of a guided visual digital operating instruction that would force me to go through the different tasks that I needed to do to produce a quality part.”
MES and its role in training
Robling noted that there’s a skill gap in manufacturing. But MES can close that gap.
It’s not only difficult to find workers in the trades. It’s tough to retain them once you’ve hired them.
“I know there’s not a worse feeling than doing a job and not really knowing what you’re supposed to do,” Robling said.
Some people might even give up and look for other jobs if they can’t easily figure out how to complete tasks and learn how equipment works on the factory floor.
“Maybe you don’t have clear instructions on what you need to do, and you kind of feel bad having to go ask your supervisor again because you don’t want to look stupid,” Robling said. “So, you try and figure things out on your own.”
Connected Process Control can walk workers through a process step-by-step, no supervisor needed.
MES’s functionality beyond training
The data gathered by MES can certainly help new employees learn their jobs faster and better. But it can also be used to get ahead of problems – like waste.
“It’s kind of a repository,” Robling said. “It’s capturing all the data of what’s happening in your business, whether that’s somebody receiving goods or it’s the information that’s been captured from the machine. The downtime, the scrap values that’s happening. I think there’s a lot of really cool things you’re going to be able to do with stuff like that.”
Among those things are reducing waste. Process parameters were previously set by humans who would determine the ideal temperature or pressures to produce a quality part or product.
Now machines can do this.
“If we’re capturing all of that data, we’ve got all the good pieces being produced, we know the process parameters at the time a part was scrapped,” Robling said. “They can now start making those suggestions as far as [for example], ‘Hey, your scrap percentage is 5% higher when your process parameters are within these limits,’ and now you can start making decisions on, ‘Okay, maybe I want to tighten that up so when, let’s say, it’s a temperature measuring outside of a threshold, your system automatically alerts you and maybe automatically scraps that part so it doesn’t make it further down the chain, and people aren’t wasting their time.”
This means customers aren’t ending up with subpar parts.
“There’s no value to you getting customers that are upset with you,” he said.
