In the run-up to the New Year, we’re summarizing our key learnings of 2017 into a quick checklist for your 2018 Additive Manufacturing IT endeavors. Taking these seriously will reduce your Total Cost of Ownership and make sure you are production ready.
Let’s start with the easiest:
Performance Measurement
The simplest initiative is to start measuring your Overall Equipment Efficiency, Failed Build levels or other Key Performance Indicators using data from your machines. With our Machine Analytics module, you can start today with an existing dashboard or incorporate the data into your own solutions.
Transparency
Many of you work in organizations that already operate many printers, though you might not know where they are, what they do and how often they do it. Using device data to track your assets and processes is the first step to creating a more transparent network and learning from your experience. Our Machine Analytics module includes a Gantt chart of all historical prints fed simply by data from machines.
Process Automation
To see immediate ROI from your data, start by identifying manual steps you could cut out with data: How can your sales team see when the printers are available? Can we alert customers or sales teams automatically if the print fails or once it goes into production? These and many other options are part of our MES solution.
Traceability
Additive production has many advantages over subtractive and other processes. Among them is your level of data access – let’s use it. Provide all required traceability documentation – and more – to your customers by extracting data from the machines and digitalizing process events. MES does this, and we’re augmenting it every day: We’re excited about announcements forthcoming in 2018.
Quality
This, of course, is the big one: Using all the data generated to draw conclusions about quality that could influence the incidence of testing. There’s still plenty of work to do, but it is never too late to start developing strategies to capture all that data in order to make the necessary abstractions.
Call us to discuss how we can help you optimize data to improve your additive manufacturing process in 2018. The industry has tremendous opportunities if we use it wisely.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the Authentise Team!
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