To help your company achieve success, the new HDS from HMC has flexibility designed-in. This helps ensure that the HDS will provide you with the information you need to better understand the process, to discern the capabilities of operators and mechanics, and to identify the highest-leverage improvement opportunities.

Special Reason Codes
When performance in any time interval is below the trigger level, the system asks for a reason code. In most cases these will be reason codes for downtime, however you may might want to design specific codes to record other activities as well. For example, you might want to record all adjustments, or adjustments of a specific type. Or you may want to collect data on quality deviations or even on exceptional performance.

The HDS is designed to adapt to these needs and adding new codes is quick and easy. Simply establish new codes for the data you want, and train operators in how to use them appropriately. It is important to remember that reason codes can be entered at any time, not just when required because of below trigger-level performance. Operators can enter reason codes as often as needed - each time they decide to make a certain adjustment, for example. It is then possible to analyze the data as usual and gain more detailed information. With this data on adjustments, you will be able to identify which shifts do the most adjustments, how they effect machine performance and you could even look at the PLC reason codes for those hours when an adjustments are made to find more information about the machine status before and after the change.

Stops Ranking

The HDS main screen includes a 'Stops Ranking' which displays the top problems for a defined period. This feature can be set to rank by duration (total time recoded as lost for that reason code) or by frequency (number of times the reason code appeared) in a specified time period - or both, depending on your needs.

In general, Managers focus on the problems with the longest duration because this converts directly to lost production minutes. However, small problems that occur frequently can drain the energy and enthusiasm of your Operators. You can read more about the 'Stops Ranking' feature at http://www.h-m-c.com/HDSMktg_mail_4.html .

Multi-Parameter Capability
One of the exciting new features of the HDS from HMC is a multi-parameter capability which allows you to measure performance in more than one way. Target and trigger levels can be set based on throughput - for a high-volume production module, for example - or based on reject or quality levels. This additional flexibility allows you to monitor and analyze performance based on the parameters that are most critical for each machine.

The new HDS from HMC will be available at the end of April, 2004. Stay tuned for more information on this commercial grade system, or contact HMC for further details or to see a demo CD.

The new Holistic Data System (HDS) will have all the benefits of the Hourly Data System that HMC has developed and installed in numerous client facilities over the last 8 years, along with a number of enhancements to make it more powerful and more user-friendly. With the Hourly Data System some clients have achieved as much as 35% improvements in production in the first month, we expect even greater success with the new HDS.

The HDS is a visual system that can easily be configured to a number of parameters including shifts, crews, standard work week, time measurement intervals, trigger levels, brands, stop-codes, etc. Like the Hourly Data System, it overcomes many of the weaknesses of traditional shop-floor data collection systems. The HDS provides real-time information, comparing performance at regular time intervals with historic performance for each production module. Each hour is a new hour, so Operators are motivated to reach short-term performance targets throughout their shift (in most cases hourly). The graphic display makes it easy to recognize trends in production so proactive measures can be taken before a major problem occurs. Management can monitor production and gain a better understanding of what factors are limiting, or facilitating, Operator performance.

The new HDS is capable of retrieving production data directly from the packers (or case packers) and will interface with the makers to download fault codes for below-trigger performance intervals. All charts and graphs are generated automatically, with enhanced flexibility allowing analysis by cell, machine type, crew, etc. The second phase of development will integrate the HDS with SAP, allowing you to download throughput and reject data to SAP and enabling the integration of maintenance tasks with the SAP system.

©2004 HMC, Inc. All rights reserved.