Resolving Unplanned Downtime – Case Study

CHALLENGE

For the facility, unplanned production stops were hurting productivity and overall equipment efficiency. The plant personnel could not understand the proper root cause of the equipment failure.

“Although they could locate where the issue happened and the end-result, they were not able to isolate why it happened and what caused the issue. Machine failures result in man hours wasted, product loss and unnecessary downtime.”

This image illustrates a liquid packaging facility and a snippet of part of the process.

SOLUTION

Use the LineSpex Machine Vision System to optimize video in real time, with easy playback control and downtime tracking with the ability to quickly view issues based on PLC (Programmable logic controller) tags and downtime events.

RESULTS

After implementation of the LineSpex System on multiple lines and equipment centers, the system was used to perform a root cause analysis for common events on the bottling lines, case packers and palletizers and other various machine centers.

Shortly after the installation of the system, the company was able to identify the reasons using video playback and implemented an appropriate change in protocol to reduce minor stops; This resulted in a 10% increase in productivity and +$104,000 savings in minor stops in less than 10 months.

TOTAL RETURN ON INVESTMENT

+$104,000

TOTAL PROJECT COST

$40,000

PROJECT PLAYBACK

3.5 Months

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Overall production improvements across all lines
  • Pinpointing downtime events and gaining percentage points against efficiencies
  • Continue to share LineSpex system with operators so they can implement it into their daily DT analysis

DIRECT FEEDBACK

On the filler machine, we used it during a minor stop route to understand the losses. We used it to aid us in creating our tic sheet. One person looked through 100 or more stops to get an understanding of base line of stops. The result of the project was a 32% reduction of stops.

Operational Excellence Manager

LineSpex has significantly decreased the amount of time it takes us to troubleshoot and find the root causes of machine jams. In the past, the team and I used to spend hours standing at the equipment center watching and waiting for faults to occur now we can see several angles of jams within minutes.

Assistant Manager of Maintenance Operations

Download Liquid Packaging Case Study PDF

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