Plastic Parts Direct

Joe Bowes, Director of Plastic Parts Direct:

‘We knew we had holes in our productivity and the obvious solution was to install a system that could analyse real-time data. We could then use this data to plug some of these holes.

It was also very important we didn’t overload ourselves with information and risk becoming less efficient by trying to tackle too many issues at once.’

Since implementing Intouch, Monday morning start-up times have improved by 1 hour across all machines, cycle times have improved by 5-8%, uptime has been significantly improved and the real-time data has led them to make effective productivity decisions.

‘One machine, in particular, was underperforming mainly due to its age. We cross-referenced with the same tools running on other machines over a period of time which confirmed there was an issue. This prompted us to buy a new machine to replace this one and instantly we saw an increase of 30% in efficiency and cycle times and a reduction in power consumption too.

One of our biggest savings is downtime during normal production. Previously machines could be left for 5-10 minutes before being noticed which led to another 10-15 minutes of warm-up time and re-start time. Now they are attended to instantly eliminating the need to wait to restart.

All production staff have bought into the system and what it has to offer as, along with the obvious interest side of things, it has proven to save them time and effort throughout their shift and they also have a tendency to be more competitive about keeping the screen green!.’

Joe Bowes
Director