Page 45 - MetalForming March 2016

Lincoln Electric’s CheckPoint production-monitoring network provides much-needed traceability reporting–which can be accessed in full reporting from a PC or in abbreviat- ed form from a mobile device. This allows fabricators to create records for customer review on welding-consumable certifications, and maintain records for quality initiatives and other similar activities.
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welding areas, so you can’t easily walk around and see everything. One of the big drivers behind the use of Check- Point is to understand what is hap- pening in these unique, often secluded production environments.”
In addition, the network captures audit-trail data to satisfy reporting requirements for ISO, Six Sigma, sta- tistical process control, quality cost delivery, lean manufacturing and other quality initiatives. Of particular bene- fit is calculation of OEE.
“An OEE calculation, measuring machine availability, performance and quality, can be very useful in under- standing the status of a production environment,” Daniel says. ”Welding systems can vary greatly in the num- ber of welds or the amount of arc time. With a robotic system, we may expect to see thousands of welds per day, but a semi-automatic welding station that also includes some assembly may only generate a couple hundred welds. That is where the OEE calculation is very useful because it allows manufactur- ers to set equipment availability and performance expectations separate- ly for each of those different types of production areas. The OEE results essentially normalize the data so that users quickly can tell whether equip-
ment is operating above, at or below expectations. It is difficult to achieve that perspective when just looking at weld counts or arc times in a given workcell.”
Combining such capabilities with cloud storage further enhances pro- duction monitoring in general, and the CheckPoint network in particular.
“Cloud architecture provides ease of setup and accessibility,” says Daniel. “No need to set up an appli- cation on each user’s device or install a server application at a customer’s facility.”
Accessibility to customized data and reports is another convenient benefit of CheckPoint’s cloud architecture, according to Daniel.
“I may have two or three facilities and I want to see an overall picture of my performance metrics,” he says. “I easily can place all of that into one site and view it on my computer, tablet or smart- phone from anywhere. In addition, users can choose which reports to view and adjust the time range on their reports. They can have daily or weekly views, or customized date ranges. A user also can configure a daily digest, picking desired standard reports and having those deliv- ered to an e-mail address at a specific time each day.” MF
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