Today’s manufacturer requires an efficient and cost-effective solution for automatically tracking, processing, and analyzing data accumulated from operations. One of the processes by which manufacturing companies can do this is centerlining. Also called run-to-target, centerlining helps reduce variability and increase efficiency.
GE Intelligent Platforms recently announced the Proficy Accelerator for Centerlining, a software solution designed to identify process and product inconsistencies, perform statistical analysis to improve control, and manage operations in real time.
A wide range of manufacturers use point solutions to deal with various production problems. Often, the solutions don’t work or communicate well together, leading to inefficient operations and increased cost. GE’s Proficy Accelerator is the company’s newest high-impact solution meant to address productivity problems in manufacturing enterprises.
Mike Yost, General Manager of Proficy Software Manufacturing Solutions, and Sheila Kester, GE’s General Manager, Proficy Operations Management Software, recently spoke with Manufacturing Business Technology about the ongoing battle against manufacturing inefficiency, addressing point problems, and whether there’s still reluctance on the part of some manufacturers to embrace some or all of these technological solutions.
Companies are not all at the same point, as far as the solutions they use to address some of their point problems. Some companies aren’t very far along at all. But are you seeing a good reception from some of these companies that, maybe, for years really put off embracing some of these new technologies and solutions?
Kester: I think we are…I definitely think the thing that’s popped up in the last couple of years that’s really made people who are more manually-oriented more likely to take advantage of this are some of those food safety issues and product safety issues that have come up. Maybe they were always there, but they’re very, very public now and you can’t take those kinds of chances, if you ever could. So we’re working with some folks now that are less automated than a typical customer.
Yost: I’d certainly say that folks understand, as the speed of markets increase and complexities increase, the need for systems in manufacturing is definitely there and growing…Yes, we are seeing people that are interested in it. But as far as those who break open the checkbook, we’re seeing a lot more drivers through things like food safety and those types of initiatives and regulatory requirements. Things like that.
Are a lot of companies dealing with point solutions that don’t communicate well with one another? In your opinion, is it a big issue that a lot of IT professionals and their companies are dealing with?
Yost: Absolutely. We see that as a huge issue. One of the issues we face a lot when we come into a facility, if we’re walking in as a solution provider, we’re offering another software solution. Somebody might say ‘Hey, I already have 12 solutions, and you’re going to offer me a 13th? Who’s going to support that?’…The ability to help eliminate those point solutions is a big bonus…
With the economy struggling the way it has, are you still seeing some of your customers have a hard time spending the necessary money to address some of the issues that they’re dealing with?
Yost: We’re living with, in 2010, budgets that were set in 2009. So I think that’s a reality that, whether it’s staffing levels, or it’s budgets for capital spending, or project spending, people expected 2010 to be really bad. And they planned accordingly. Even though we’re seeing an uptick, we’re still seeing people with tight budgets.
Kester: It’s not just the budgets. It’s the level of governance and oversight. I think that has permanently changed as a result of what happened in 2008 and 2009. There was sort of this knee-jerk reaction of cutting everything…But now we’re finding that much smaller levels of capital appropriation are having to go up to the CFO desk, for example. Plant managers just don’t like that. A CFO is far more likely to approve an appropriation when the plant manager says “I’ve already done it. Here are the savings in our plant. And if you multiply this by the number of lines we have, this is what the payback’s going to be.” The accelerator helps to acknowledge that and really helps a plant manager get a project through.
A lot of manufacturers need help right now with product changeovers. Since companies are running more products and offering more options, they need certain solutions to help them over their machinery? What is sparking this product changeover trend?
Yost: To compete in the marketplace, you see people often offering different varieties. So now you get six different packaging types on a bag of chips. People are competing… We see lots of different customers, time and time again, who are offering some sort of competitive differentiation for them and their marketplace that requires that they be responsive in their manufacturing and their production operations. When there’s that sort of strategic tie between business goals and the need in manufacturing, that’s where we really see big things happening. We see a lot more of that happening (in the future).
For more information on GE’s Proficy Accelerator For Centerlining, check out www.ge.com.
