Downtime under control

Our new client, a production company operating in the pharmaceutical industry, has signed a number of new contracts for the supply of drugs in the last 12 months. This resulted in a dynamic increase in sales, and hence the need to increase the production volume.

However, due to external factors, the company could not expand its halls, purchase new production lines or significantly increase employment to meet the increase in demand. Each hour of reduced performance increased the risk of default on contracts and related financial penalties.

In light of the existing restrictions on the expansion of the production potential, the factory director decided to focus the efforts on optimizing the processes and maximizing the occupancy of the machine park already operating.

It was necessary to look at the downtime at individual positions and identify their number, duration and causes of occurrence. Then, using e.g. Pareto principle, eliminate or reduce the incidence of the most burning problems.

However, it was not an option to introduce additional administrative burdens for already busy operators.

Factory employees independently installed FitMech sensors on 10 reference production lines. Immediately after configuration, the system started to automatically detect the current status of machines, and when they stopped working - it identified downtime and notified operators who, using tablets with the FitMech Smart Factory application installed, could indicate the reasons for their occurrence and attach comments.

Having comprehensive downtime reports in hand, the factory director already knew which of them had the greatest impact on production efficiency.