Minimal downtime saves Coloplast vital resources

Solutions

• Production Management
• Global downtime analysis
• Plant information

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.