Posts by Christina Fazzari
Resilient Operations: The Ability to Bounce Back
Heineken’s example To show the power of digitalization, Balasubramanian pointed to a digitalization project at Heineken, which produces 188 million hectoliters of beer annually at 165 breweries in more than 70 countries. Its longstanding paper-based system had proven to be inadequate for managing the vast supply chain and equipment needed to ensure a steady supply…
Read MoreGenba Scientists and Scientific Thinking
Scientific thinking has become very popular within the Lean community since the publication of Toyota Kata in 2009. If something is popular in the business world, it often means that it is recognized as conceptually easy to grasp, easy to do, easy to talk about, or all three. When something becomes popular, it is likely…
Read MoreHow Snowflake Merges IT and OT Data
David Greenfield, Automation World: A decade ago, when you would talk to manufacturers about moving their operations data to the cloud, it was not in their plans. It was very much like 20 years ago, when most manufacturers were wary of Ethernet use of on the plant floor. Given the manufacturing industry’s move toward the…
Read MoreWhy ERP Needs MES for Manufacturing Success
This reveals a hard truth: people have trouble picturing exactly how an MES enhances operations, expands the value of business-level systems, and gives its users unparalleled visibility, knowledge and control over their operations. Through the lens of a food manufacturer, let’s explore how, from receipt of raw materials all the way through distribution, an MES…
Read MoreMES: The Plant Floor Data Translator
With so many functions, it’s no wonder that all this disparate plant information must be standardized so that an MES application can easily interpret it. After translation and organization of the data, MES applications provide the operators and supervisors information to optimize operations. Without a structured MES enablement approach, however, the process of collecting valid…
Read MoreSub-Zero Shares its Digital Transformation Insights
With its three well-known brands—Sub-Zero refrigerators, Wolf ovens and cooktops, and Cove dishwashers—Sub-Zero is widely recognized as a manufacturer of top-end home appliances. Founded in 1945 and still privately owned, Sub-Zero is not necessarily a company many would expect to be at the forefront of industry’s digital transformation. At the Snowflake Data Cloud Summit, Justin…
Read MoreKawasaki Robotics Announces New Cobot Line and Use of Off-the-Shelf Tools
End-of-arm tooling (EOAT) for robots has come a long way over the past decade. Prior to the advances made recently, changing EOATs was often difficult, time consuming and offered limited choices. Today, however, EOAT changeovers are relatively quick and easy (plug-and-play options even exist) and the number of choices that span a range of applications…
Read MoreScaling OEE to Digitize Lean Manufacturing
Challenges resolved and ongoing As with any new technology implementation, whether it’s on-premises or delivered via SaaS, there will be process issues to work through to deliver success. This project at Bayer Crop Science is no exception to this reality. Johnson noted that the first challenge faced dealt with managing global requirements and expectations as…
Read MoreAI-Vision Software Resolves Complex Robot Tasks
The fast advance of robot vision capabilities may makes it appear that these technologies have resolved all of the work cell issues that can impact reliable and accurate robot movements. But these technologies, as advanced as they appear, still have many obstacles to overcome to become more ubiquitous throughout industry. Microspi Industries, a supplier of…
Read MoreMaxing Out Your Maintenance Software
Thanks to pervasive sensing technologies, improved connectivity and advances in analytics, manufacturers are increasingly well situated to not only better manage, but maximize maintenance strategies for industrial assets, ensuring that operations run smoothly with little to no risk of downtime. Maintenance software, long a pillar of the industrial automation tool stack, has evolved significantly over…
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