Introduction
Major Film Manufacturer
Chemical Software
Proficy Operations Analytics, Proficy Plant Applications, iFIX
Proficy Smart Factory - MES Solutions, Proficy Historian, Proficy HMI / SCADA
Background
Increasing overall production efficiency
A progressive manufacturer of specialty film products was looking for innovative ways to increase their overall production efficiency.
The company believed if they could marry in-process predictive analytics with their expert engineering and operations teams they’d be able to substantially improve operating efficiencies, specifically by reducing overall downtime.
The company theorized that if they could predict downtime events during production with some advanced warning, they could adjust the manufacturing process in real time to avoid conditions that, left unchecked, would have contributed to costly film breaks.
Challenge
Costly Line Downtime and Waste
The company produces a variety of engineered plastic film products for various industrial uses - each use and customer has its own particular specifications and corresponding ideal operating line conditions.
Line instability can cause off-quality product and lead to very costly line downtime - due to scrapped product and the extended time required for line cleanup when there is a film break.
Each film break can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Solution
Predictive Analytics Combined with Process Knowledge
As part of an overall plan to continuously optimize quality and production, the company has implemented an innovative model of partnering process engineers and operations teams working on a 24x7 basis together using real-time data and analytics as their central focus.
The manufacturer further looked to leverage predictive technologies and added Proficy Operations Analytics to the mix – using GE Digital’s Predictive Operations Center to pull in data from multiple disparate data sources, monitor over 400 measures of line stability and leveraging machine learning to continuously predict top potential causes of line instability and film breaks in real time.
Predictive insights are presented to the process engineers in easy to understand displays, distilling thousands of pieces of data into just the elements needed to address the current problems.
Process engineers are able to use GE Digital’s analytics to see and understand the causes of line instability and make real-time recommendations to the operations team to avoid line instability and film breaks.
Result
Reducing Costs, Increasing Uptime, Minimizing Waste
The manufacturer’s forward-thinking approach has seen real results – improving overall uptime from the mid 80% level to over 90%, saving the company more than $500K annually.
The marriage of Proficy Operations Analytics technology with the company’s innovative model of partnering process engineering with operations is delivering new benefits every day.
Currently, the company is expanding its use of Proficy Operations Analytics across new lines and new product areas.
