Panduit Keeps Manufacturers Efficient with OEM Solutions

By Mae Kowalke
TMCnet Contributor

There’s hardly any room for inefficiency when it comes to global manufacturing, whether it is an original equipment manufacturer or a contract manufacturer. In most cases, inefficiency is just another way of saying “market opportunity” for the competition.

“Both the operators and machines need to provide consistent high-level yield, e?ective cycle time and uptime to achieve world-class productivity status,” according to Vince Barone, business development manager for Panduit Corporation, in a report.

Measuring overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is one way of making sure inefficiency does not creep into the production process beyond an acceptable tolerance. OEE measures actual run-time vs. scheduled production time, parts produced in a given time frame versus rated production speed, and the number of good parts produced versus the total parts attempted to be produced in a given time frame.

Keeping OEE in line requires several best practices, according to Barone. These include the setting of production performance baselines, establishing maintenance schedules, instituting standardized repair procedures, formalizing proactive training programs, monitoring system performance, and tracking manufacturing assets.

“While the benefits of these best practices are easy to understand, implementation of the required monitoring, tracking and reporting systems can be overwhelming, especially for high-volume cable tie systems,” noted Barone in the white paper.

Manual monitoring of automated cable tie installations is not the most efficient way to make sure OEE stays at a high level. What’s needed is an automatic cable tie installation system such as that offered by Panduit.

The wire management solutions developed by Panduit provide everything necessary to bundle, route, protect, terminate and identify wire and cable for a wide range of volumes and environments, doing it in a cost-effective manner.

The company’s Automatic Cable Tie Installation Systems feature an industry leading multi-language microprocessor-based controller, in combination with an award-winning Ethernet enabled dispenser and data interface software. It allows management to monitor real-time production data including job tracking, cycle counts, error codes and routine maintenance alerts. Advanced production information and support makes tracking and reporting production performance of the entire system easy, according to Barone.

It helps keep efficiency high in four ways.

First, the Automatic Cable Tie Installation System helps with troubleshooting, in that it captures data that is displayed through a LCD panel on the dispenser, giving the operator immediate feedback on machine performance and cycle counts.

It comes with automatic e-mail notification, assisting production and repair personal adhere to maintenance schedules.

Panduit’s Automatic Cable Tie Installation Systems come with data extraction and reporting systems, letting management easily import data into spreadsheets for further analysis.

Also, through system performance analysis, it helps management discover which operators are lagging behind and might benefit from additional training.

So while inefficiency is a challenge for manufacturers, there are few excuses for why that must be the case when it comes to cable tie installation.

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Edited by Brooke Neuman