This engineering company believes that continuous renewal will bring world-class success. The key factor in operational profitability is the extent to which a machine’s actual capacity is utilized. To maximize productive time, CNC Machining Oy began collaboration with Process Genius, which provides Digital Twin services. The new application made resource use transparent for managers. They no longer have to make guesses — a real-time view of the factory floor is available on any device.
CNC Machining Oy specializes in light and mid-heavy CNC machining. The parts they make are used in heavy machinery in mining and road maintenance machines, for example. Machine monitoring and mobile acknowledgment were originally needed for production measurement.
We strive for maximal use of existing resources. Even with limited time and capacity, we can now operate at the required level of efficiency. The Digital Twin application enables us to measure the productive time of machines and how much actual capacity is used — the customer only wants to pay for the completed item. The price is based on time and a resource for which they are not paying, says Juuso Herranen, Quality and Development Manager.
At CNC, the development principle is grounded in Lean methods of eliminating waste. You only do what the customer is paying for. Whenever a new development step has been taken, we immediately seek the next thing we could do better. Production is monitored continuously, and new metrics solutions are sought.
Digital central view ensuring maintenance performance
According to Herranen, it is more important for a company to understand the long-term production load than the current situation. Data on the environment and conditions, such as temperature and humidity, is also interesting, because a temperature difference of just a few degrees can affect production. CNC’s application includes a tailored feature for monitoring external conditions. “Monitoring of the environment, thermometers and humidity meters were easy to install. If there was a complaint, we could easily check the production conditions,” says Herranen.
After the utilization ratio, the second-most common feature is monitoring maintenance.“A digital central view of maintenance has enabled us to ensure that maintenance is carried out. Premature faults can be prevented, with possible savings of thousands of euros,” says Herranen. Document management is also child’s play with the application. Quality documents, safety instructions and production-related matters are easy to manage.
Herranen says that cooperation with Process Genius has been smooth. “The service process is clear. They were clearly there to serve their customers – they valued our opinion and development work was good. We got what we ordered.” Herranen says that surface treatment companies, small engineering companies and machine repair shops could benefit from Process Genius’ Digital Twin solutions for the monitoring of operational status.
Investing in continuous development, CNC views itself as a high-quality company in which continuous transparency is important. When asked about their next development targets, Herranen says that it would be interesting to gain more detailed knowledge of how much they can produce at the current utilization rate, and how much unused capacity there is in each production machine.