Status and KPIs

First off, what are KPIs?

KPIs are key performance indicators that basically tell you that A: you are doing well or B: you are doing badly.

Next on the agenda: what is visual management?

Visual Management is displaying important information to workers. Why is this important you may ask? Well if you can’t see the information you don’t know what to fix.

So the goal here is to marry these two options. We need a way to easily display our KPIs and have this information delivered effectively across our place of business. Visualizing data is nothing new, especially in the manufacturing and automation world; but the way we see that data and the way we collect that data has definitely changed.

Back in the day you had a person in charge of monitoring and timing the number of widgets being produced. They would then take that number and write in on a chalkboard for the employees to see. Obviously this was not in real time and often this number would fluctuate between readings. But it all started here. People realized that they needed to see the information no matter how delayed it was in order to start making changes to increase productivity.

Well the time has changed and now gathering that information can be made easy. Using technology such as OPC (open connectivity via open standards) you can now take data from numerous vendors and bring it together. This is a big step in helping companies realize that they have the flexibility to choose the right equipment for the job and avoids being locked down to specific vendors.  With a data visualization solution such as Status you can take information from a number of sources, OPC, SQL, and ODBC and display this information across the plant or work place in real time. This will bring your KPIs to the forefront of your business and allow your employees to make changes in order to increase productivity. What can be better than increasing productivity? And with the web solution Status offers you can now reach more employees faster and further than before. 

Becoming more efficient

In recent years the need to become more energy efficient has gained prominence in today’s business society.

In a recent survey commissioned by energyrethinking, 40% of respondents said that one of the biggest barriers to becoming more energy efficient has been the upfront initial investment.  I tend to agree with that, but on the other hand if you invest in a solution like “Status” to monitor your energy consumption and turn off equipment that is not being used, or replace equipment that is drawing to much energy you can save anywhere from 9-11% in the first year. These savings have been realized by a company in South Korea called ChunCheon BioIndustry Foundation.

The ChunCheon BioIndustry Foundation is optimizing their HVAC controllers on time by a schedule using the Status Vision Designer. They reported saving 3-4% on energy consumption.  They have 3 buildings and each building had its own control room. By implementing a web solution, the have moved to a central control room reducing the need to hire additional engineers to monitor the buildings.  These savings were realized through a small investment. So although I would agree that some energy saving efforts can be a big initial investment, this customer realized a benefit by purchasing a remote monitoring solution at a small cost.

For companies looking to reduce energy consumption and become more efficient the first question needs to be, are you monitoring the data? If you or your employees do not know your business’s energy consumption, how can you improve?  So if you are looking for a way to monitor your energy usage and don’t know where to begin feel free to give us a call 352.564.9610.