iPads and E2 Profiled in Modern Machine Shop

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as the authority on shop floor control.

Assistant Editor, writes about having fully interactive access to shopfloor control software. She discusses how the E2 ERP technology enables supervisors at metal fiIn a recent article, iPads Keep Supervisors on the Shop Floor, Emily Tudor, nishing and repair job shop to monitor shop activities and make better decisions on the spot.

According to Tudor, Hadronics supervisors Phil Robinson, Harry Taylor, John Seiwert and Ralph Demmel stand in the aisle that connects the separate bays of the shop floor. Before using iPads, supervisors relied on impromptu meetings like this to share critical data about production flow.

Because supervisors had to spend time at their desks to enter and collect data from the shopfloor control system, they were spending less time on the shop floor than they needed to be.

Tina Lopreato, vice president of operations, could see that something needed to be done to increase communication and keep the supervisors on the shop floor. By September 2010, Phil Robinson and all the supervisors were using iPads.

Keeping supervisors on the shop floor sounds simple enough, but in many companies, this seemingly obvious need is often overlooked. For Cincinnati, Ohio-based Hadronics, it took one employee’s vision, the cooperation of the shopfloor staff and four iPads to make it happen.

Tudor insists in the article that many factors contribute to keeping supervisors away from the shop floor. This was true for Hadronics, a 40-person shop that makes rollers and cylinders for the offset printing market.

Using E2 shop control software from Shoptech enables the shop to track where a part is at any given time, what machining processes need to be completed and where the part should go next, among other production data. Tina Lopreato, now vice president of operations, is familiar with the software because she used it during her 19 years in the company’s accounting department. One function of the software is its ability to generate reports based on the information the shopfloor supervisors entered from their office. Working closely with the reports, Ms. Lopreato could tell when there was a discrepancy between how long a job should take and the actual time it took to complete. She realized that productivity suffered when supervisors left the shop floor to enter and check information on their desktop computers. She also realized that every supervisor needed direct access to the software on the shop floor in order to make good decisions during the manufacturing process. The company needed to find some way to bridge this information gap.

Ms. Lopreato informed Hadronics president Michael Green that she was going to find a way to get production data to the supervisors on the shop floor so they could make better on-the-spot decisions, and he approved.

Using the iPad on the shop floor has brought a new level of communication and interaction to the company. Supervisors can access pertinent information and make changes on the spot. As a result, the company has increased quality, reduced rework by at least 25 percent, increased on-time delivery by 33 percent and cut lead times in half.

E2 is for machine shops, job shops, fabrication shops, mold/die shops, screw shops, repair shops, service shops, captive shops, spring manufacturers, stampers, machine builders, and plastic injection molding manufacturers, to name a few. E2 is globally considered the authority of shop floor control.

Shoptech Software
www.shoptech.com
Paul Ventura
pr@shoptech.com
800-525-2143