The manufacturing industry’s continued commitment to Industry 4.0 and Industrial IoT has contributed to pressure on manufacturers to continuously upgrade and improve their operations. This process can be daunting. In a previous post, I discussed the Industry 4.0 journey. Informed by the Industry 4.0 journey of Facteon and our global customers, we decided to build a specialised software product, COSMOline. It’s an innovative Industrial IoT tool that integrates with existing MES, ERP and SCADA systems in the management of manufacturing operations.
Often, the most daunting task in bringing a factory into the internet age is the need to refit a factory with the latest highly automated and intelligent machinery. While we are targeting Industry 4.0-ready manufacturers, our team of Industrial IoT specialists can provide expert advice and solutions to get your factory Industry 4.0-ready. COSMOline is an essential, modern day manufacturing tool that allows you to upgrade your existing machinery. This option often proves more cost effective as you’re able to continue to draw value from your current machinery and the associated initial capital investment. As a result, both disruption to your operations and the investment required to upgrade your operations is minimised.
Our team of software specialists and Industrial IoT experts work closely with our operations, machinery design and control systems specialists to enable us to build software products that integrate seamlessly into a variety of manufacturing environments. This provides you with greater flexibility, ease of adjustment to a new factory management system with minimal disruption to your operations.
COSMOline is a cloud-based system that works anywhere and on any device. It’s a simple and easy to use system for equipment maintenance, real-time monitoring and management of efficiency, quality and environmental resource consumption.
As a Software as a Service product (SaaS), customers only pay for what they need and use, with the flexibility to change their plan on a monthly basis. Customers also receive monthly software updates that are packed with new features, enhancements and fixes. No action is needed from the customer and the updates come at no additional cost.
The latest COSMOline release aims to further develop the product as a best in class Industrial IoT software for intelligent manufacturing. Recently released features include: spare part management, enhanced preventative maintenance as well as eight new maintenance and efficiency reports. This gives operations managers all of the information they need on any device. We aim to distinguish COSMOline as an essential manufacturing software product that has applications across industries and markets.
Industry 4.0 has commercialised the value in accessing accurate information regarding machinery operations. Further, the continued rise of just-in-time manufacturing has created a need for increased integration across departments. In response to this trend, we have developed an innovative spare parts management functionality for the Maintenance Module of COSMOline.
It provides the ability to create, update, consume, transfer and manage spare parts in preparation for scheduled maintenance tasks. Once a spare part is created in the system, its stock levels are automatically tracked. Factory managers can transfer parts between warehouses and manufacturing sites. This makes it even easier for larger organisations operating multiple production sites to manage their spare parts.
As with all COSMOline features, spare parts management is natively integrated with other existing functionalities. Spare parts management can be of use in the preventative maintenance functionality. Here, customers can add and configure spare parts to their recurring preventative schedules. This ensures the spare parts required to complete a maintenance task are available and in stock. Preventative maintenance is essential in avoiding costly machinery breakdowns and downtime. Through the effective management of spare parts, you won’t experience maintenance delays due to a lack of resource. COSMOline draws on just-in-time manufacturing principles to promote the operation of a lean organisation through the management of spare parts at lower cost with less waste.
Above all, operations managers can make more informed decisions drawing on a single, accurate source of data. The modular nature of COSMOline allows for simple analysis of key production line metrics. You can also identify potential issues in your production line such as manufacturing bottlenecks. Increased visibility of your manufacturing operations allows for improved decision making.
The benefits of preventative maintenance are clear. It enables effective and remote maintenance of a production line to avoid unscheduled downtime, loss of productivity and loss of profit. Preventative maintenance is scheduled and managed through either recurring or one-off work orders and tasks that are natively integrated within the spare parts management functionality.
COSMOline customers can have better visibility of both the maintenance and efficiency of their production lines. Any unforeseen event that impacts the availability of an individual machine in the production line is tracked and reflected in the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) KPI for the individual machine and overarching OEE for the production line. This allows factory managers and staff to use machine information to make informed decisions. Greater visibility allows for informed decision making by providing a definitive source of information regarding the performance of your production line.
The COSMOline Reporting Module draws together information from other areas of the software. This module enables collaboration and provides accessibility across your manufacturing teams and operations. We release new reports most months. We can also work with customers to build customised reports.
The Reporting Module enable users to spend more time working on the production line and less time performing repetitive and trivial admin tasks such as manually producing and distributing reports.
Following the capture of such valuable information by COSMOline, users can analyse and share that information with their team in just a few clicks.
The latest COSMOline update offers eight new reports, including detailed work orders and tasks by date, user and equipment, preventative productivity, user productivity and work hours by category and analysis of efficiency and downtime of production lines.
The automation of reports increases visibility, collaboration and reduces time-consuming administrative tasks. With less time spent on admin, factory managers can focus on managing the preventative maintenance of production lines, real-time monitoring of production line efficiency and the quality of the products being produced.
Our main mission is to build and commercialise innovative and highly scalable Industrial IoT software solutions, based on Industry 4.0 standards, that add immediate value to the manufacturing operations of our customers.
With extensive buzz around Industry 4.0, it can be a daunting task to begin transitioning your factory into the internet age. To get your factory COSMOline-ready, we offer expert Industrial IoT consulting services. These include a variety of packages and workshops, an assessment of your organisation’s current technology stack, followed by recommendations regarding the next steps to prepare your factory for COSMOline.
We work in collaboration with all our customers and partners. We are proud to earn their continuous trust and support.
At Facteon, we embed Industry 4.0 technology and thinking into everything we do as a direct result of our own experience as a manufacturer. We use that to offer solutions for manufacturers that combine our internet-connected production lines with lean manufacturing processes and our Industrial IoT software platform, COSMOline.
We utilise the expertise we have gained to eliminate key pain points from your manufacturing operations so you can focus on delivering superior products to your customers in an efficient and consistent manner.
