Skip to main content
Proficy Smart Factory - MES Solutions

Minimal downtime saves Coloplast vital resources

Efficiency

Increased line and machine efficiency

Flexibility

Faster response times

Downtime

Minimized downtime with high transparency

Introduction

Company

Coloplast

Industry

Life Sciences and Pharmaceutical

Products

iFIX, Proficy Plant Applications

Product Categories

Proficy HMI / SCADA, Proficy Historian, Proficy Smart Factory - MES Solutions

Solutions

 

  • Production Management
  • Global downtime analysis
  • Plant information

 

Background

At Coloplast, the innovative and world-renowned provider of healthcare products and services, the need for an efficient packaging flow for its wide range of wound care products is ever increasing.

 

By installing new Proficy OEE software on all its packaging machines and working with GE Digital partner Novotek, Coloplast is gaining unrivalled insight into the various causes of operational downtime. Simultaneously, automated production data analysis can speed up downtime diagnosis, providing production managers with more knowledge of what action to take to keep the vital packaging process up and running.

 

Fast Response Times

As packaging is at the end of a highly specialized production process, flexibility is vital if Coloplast’s round-the-clock packaging operations are to keep running smoothly. Naturally, when short-notice shifts and unscheduled production halts occur during packaging, operators must respond immediately. With Proficy software automatically surveying every packaging step on every machine, problems can be identified and solved when they first arise, cutting response times to a bare minimum.

High Transparency

A detailed overview of several hundred downtime causes provides Coloplast with a fully transparent packaging process. Both scheduled and unscheduled stops are registered and analyzed, and numerous analytic options are presented. Management can then quickly isolate variables, detect downtime patterns and draw detailed downtime profiles for each machine and packaging step.

Tried-and-true technology from Novotek has given us the flexibility and transparency we need to maintain superior quality in our dynamic packaging process.

Birger Andersen - Project Manager, Coloplast, Denmark

Realistic Prediction

With the detailed historic data from each machine, combined with the in-depth downtime knowledge, management can also accurately predict future packaging capabilities. The Proficy data computation forecasts are accurate right down to number of units on a day-to-day and individual machine basis, so manpower is allocated most effectively and the budgeting process is enhanced. Predictions are no longer based on feelings and hunches but on facts and indisputable data.

 

Before we installed Proficy OEE software, it could take two weeks to manually pinpoint downtime problems from perhaps ten known causes. Today, we have a clear knowledge of over 200 possible causes from one day to the next.

Birger Andersen, - Project Manager Coloplast, Wound Care Div.

Common Standards

By introducing the Proficy OEE machine downtime analysis to several packaging processes, Coloplast has reaped the benefits of having a single knowledge base. Comparisons of packaging quality between product lines and divisions reveal the causality needed to optimize every step and component of the packaging process, on single machines, at product-type level and on a company-wide scale.

 

More User-Friendly

Coloplast wanted to provide its production crew with easy to-understand functionality, so a tailor-made front-end user interface was integrated into the iFIX SCADA package. By way of a logic and intuitive control environment, operators know exactly where and why production has stopped. And as the touch-screen user interface resembles the familiar manual touch-button environment, operators can instantly report and correct OEE problems.

 

Benefits:

 

  • Increased line and machine efficiency
  • Fast response times
  • High transparency
  • Realistic predictions
  • Web-based reporting

 

Download the Coloplast story.

Explore GE Digital's Industrial Apps

HMI/SCADA software in use in industrial operations
Industrial Software

Proficy HMI / SCADA

Drive smarter operator decisions with model-based high performance HMI for faster response and development.

Proficy Historian | Data Historian | GE Digital
Industrial Software

Proficy Historian

Powerful industrial time-series data collection for on-premise and cloud-based storage and analysis

Industrial automation engineer using HMI/SCADA from GE Digital
Industrial Apps

iFIX

Reduce costs and risk by enabling the high performance operator with model-based visualization.