Daniel Coetzee, Business Manager for GE Fanuc Automation, Sub-Saharan Africa
Optimising Operational Performance
Intelligent Production Management (IPM) is a growing category of technologies designed to manage - and ultimately improve - every aspect of the manufacturing production process. It includes a comprehensive group of solutions designed to help users at all levels of the organisation perform critical production functions more efficiently and effectively.
IPM hardware and software applications span a broad spectrum of functionality to manage key areas of the production lifecycle - from controlling plant floor processes to analysing and sharing performance data to managing equipment assets throughout the organisation. Ultimately, IPM represents an opportunity for companies to reduce costs, increase productivity and improve quality by optimising the performance of their production processes.
IPM solutions can be categorised into four core functional areas, which can be implemented separately or as part of a fully integrated plant-wide solution, as follows:
Asset Management
Asset Management software solutions enable manufacturers to realize tremendous gains in equipment effectiveness through proactive and targeted equipment management. Asset Management solutions allow Production and Maintenance Managers to identify and track physical assets in order to perform scheduling and maintenance tasks with greater efficiency. Equipment usage, maintenance and repair operations, asset costs and more can be traced, viewed and controlled using these applications.
Plant Intelligence
Plant Intelligence software applications are an integrated set of solutions that provide a new level of insight into operational performance, allowing decision makers to make business sense out of plant data in real time. These high-impact applications give Production Managers the information and analysis they need to make important real-time decisions that dramatically improve their performance. They are critical tools for companies seeking to gain a competitive edge through improved operations, collaborative production and corporate accountability.
Process Execution & Supervisory Control
These are the software applications that allow Operators and Process Engineers to better manage their production processes. Serving as a conduit for both communicating with the hardware and extracting real-time data from the industrial processes they control, Process Execution & Supervisory Control solutions help manufacturers visualise plant floor operations, perform supervisory automation and deliver the production data that feeds reliable, up to date information to the higher-level analytic applications. As a result, manufacturers can increase production, maximize quality and efficiency and improve regulatory compliance through user accountability.
Control Hardware
From industrial-hardened PCs and CNC systems to PLCs and robotics, these are the durable assets that are used to physically manufacture products, maintain the flow of materials and protect the safety and quality of what is being produced.
Proficy- Plant Performance Analysis and Execution Software
As a production manager, the key to unlocking the full performance potential of your manufacturing operations lies in your ability to gain a real-time understanding of what is actually happening on your plant floor. You must then be able to share that information with other important decision-makers and take action that improves both your production performance and your bottom line. Proficy from GE Fanuc Automation gives you that power.
Proficy is a software solution that digitises the collective information being generated throughout your production facilities into a "virtual plant" that can be accessed where, when and how you need it. It then allows you to measure and monitor your performance across key criteria in real time. In this way, Proficy allows you to gain clear insight into your production and greatly improve your operational effectiveness.
Proficy Features & Benefits
To improve overall profitability and effectiveness, Proficy can help you focus on several critical, interrelated areas of your production, enabling you to:
Proficy - The Virtual Plant
Proficy is a core application within the GE Fanuc Plant Intelligence Solution that enables production managers to make dramatic improvements in plant profitability and efficiency. Proficy provides a versatile and powerful solution that is entirely scalable, allowing you to cost-effectively meet your specific production requirements.
Proficy features a groundbreaking approach to digitising production operations, creating a "virtual plant" that provides unprecedented levels of analysis, reporting and insight throughout your operations. Unlike traditional MES applications, Proficy applies business and historical context to all of your real-time manufacturing information, providing an intelligent window into your manufacturing processes to help you maximize their efficiency. By digitising your production processes, Proficy allows you to gain a clear and very detailed perspective of how your products are being produced. It leverages the data being collected by any process historian and provides in-depth analysis and reporting of that information - not just by time, but by the specific events taking place throughout your operation. In this way Proficy provides real-time context to your production data, allowing you to make adjustments that increase overall efficiency, mitigate risk, improve product quality and meet important regulatory requirements - all while reducing costs and minimizing waste.
Why Proficy?
With a full breadth of application-specific modules designed to support every stage of your production process, Proficy provides crucial analysis and reporting capabilities that allow you to:
Proficy is a natural extension to the HMI/SCADA software that has helped manufacturers around the world save millions of dollars in operational costs. Proficy provides a comprehensive view of the entire production operation, giving insight into key areas such as:
Part of a Complete Plant Intelligence Solution
Proficy is a key aspect of the GE Fanuc Plant Intelligence Solution, the most comprehensive and versatile offering available. The product fits seamlessly into an integrated set of applications that includes our iHistorian plant-wide data historian, infoAgent web-based visualization and analysis tool, VisualSPC shop floor quality modules and other powerful software. This open family of applications gives you the option of installing only the modules you need or seamlessly expanding your infrastructure to incorporate a fully integrated solution.
Unique Historian-Based Approach
Proficy is designed to leverage the powerful technology of historian applications, allowing you to capture far more production data than traditional MES tools. Because it is coupled with a high performance historian, Proficy is able to leverage the detailed collection of your plant-wide data, providing an intelligent window into your entire production technology infrastructure. Proficy's unique use of historian technology also allows you to analyze past production data across the application, allowing you to calculate quality, efficiency and production management Information, even for production runs that are several years old.
Open Product Architecture
As with all applications within the GE Fanuc Plant Intelligence Solution, Proficy is designed with a completely open architecture. Just as it works seamlessly alongside our best-in-class iHistorian application, Proficy connects with Wonderware, Rockwell, OSI PI, Honeywell and many other historian systems.
Flexible and Easily Configurable
MES applications are commonly known as notoriously challenging to install and applicable only within the specific market segment for which they are configured. Proficy, on the other hand, requires minimal services to install and includes a broad scope of functionality that can be customized for virtually any industry application.
Modular and Scalable
With a modular and scalable design, Proficy can be implemented incrementally to address only the specific functionality you require at the time. Then, as your needs change, you can easily and cost effectively add new modules to further expand the overall performance of your application.
Secure and Audited
Proficy provides a secure audited environment, featuring electronic signatures and other capabilities to ensure that users have the functionality required to meet the FDA's 21 CFR Part 11 rule as well as other crucial regulations.
Comprehensive Integrated Reports and Analytics
Standard reports and analytical capabilities are built into the Proficy application, greatly simplifying the reporting process. Flexible extensions to Excel allow you to quickly and easily generate ad-hoc reports without needing a third party reporting package.
Proficy Modules: The Right Solution for Your Most Critical Production Challenges
Proficy offers configurable software packages designed for a rapid return on existing technology investments. These applications include:
Efficiency Management
The Efficiency Management module enables you to monitor and control overall equipment efficiency, providing a comprehensive look at factors such as equipment downtime waste production, as well as production quantity and event sequences. It is the ideal module for improving throughput without adding extra equipment.
Quality Management
Imagine if you were able to capture the specifications of your ideal product run - your "golden batch" - and re-create it consistently throughout your entire production. Imagine how much time, money and raw materials you could save by reducing product waste, scrap and overruns to an absolute minimum. And imagine how much your company could save annually by virtually eliminating quality-related product returns. With the Proficy Quality Management module, you can realize all of these goals and more.
Quality Management allows you to capture and summarize manufacturing and quality data in the context of production events such as batch, lot, item, serial number, time period and more. After capturing that data in whatever way you choose, Quality Management enables you to apply product specifications and recipes to that data and alarm against any out-of-spec conditions the moment they occur. If a batch or run is flawed, the module allows you to isolate exactly which products have been impacted to greatly reduce waste.
Production Management
The Production Management module provides insight into how products actually flow through your plant. It is the ideal tool for creating genealogy reports as well as making scheduling changes to reduce excess inventory.
Production Management seamlessly ties together plant operations by exchanging key production and status information with customers and internal business systems - including ERP - as well as between plant processes using the latest XML technology.
Product genealogy is a key component of the Production Management module. Genealogy allows you to trace a product throughout every step of the manufacturing process and identify exactly what materials and quality characteristics it contains.
Plant-wide Web Reporting
As an integral feature of all modules, Plant-wide Web Reporting enables plant-wide reporting and analytics from anywhere at any time. From a remote location, you can monitor operations by accessing web-based reports, dashboards and analytics. In addition to providing an accessible window into your production, Plant-wide Web Reporting provides drill-down analytical support for understanding "root cause" analyses of problem areas.
A Complete Solution: Now and in the Future
As part of GE Fanuc's complete Plant Intelligence Solution, Proficy is a sophisticated tool that greatly simplifies the analysis and execution of complex production functions taking place throughout your enterprise. Proficy goes well beyond the functionality of other plant performance analysis and execution software to provide an open and highly scalable approach that leverages historian technology in new and exciting ways. Regardless of what your current and future requirements may be, Proficy's Efficiency, Quality, Production and Reports modules can provide new levels of insight into your production - dramatically improving the performance of your entire operation.
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Tony OSullivan