Digital Manufacturing
Globalization has made the manufacturing industry prioritize cost-effective, high-quality production. Operational excellence is crucial, requiring real-time process monitoring to meet demands for speed, flexibility, and quality. Meeting customer expectations is vital in a competitive global market, requiring integrated information management aligning with business needs and manufacturing processes. Companies are adopting new initiatives and tools under increasing business pressure, with quality standards and regulations in sectors like food and pharmaceuticals posing additional challenges. Transparency and traceability are gaining importance in today’s manufacturing landscape.
NearSoft believes that manufacturing IT solutions should serve as enablers rather than goals themselves. Our platform, MOM4, is designed to help manufacturers achieve operational excellence. NearSoft’s specialized management consultants have deep domain knowledge and experience in manufacturing IT, focusing on improving efficiency and reducing operational costs. Our mission is to improve our customers’ efficiency and reduce their operational costs by providing the necessary digital tools for implementing true Lean Six Sigma (6σ), Good Manufacturing Practices and Industry 4.0 initiatives. We are experts in the area of digitalizing Manufacturing Operations Management.
MOM4
MOM4 is an open Manufacturing Operations Management solution with a wide range of features, including: Advance Planning and Scheduling (APS), Finite Capacity Scheduling (FCS), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), Data Warehousing and Analyses and Real-Time Performance Management, Quality (QMS), Maintenance (CMMS, EAM, APM) and Inventory processes.
MOM4 enables a gradual migration to an Industry 4.0 enterprise. MOM4 provides a flexible approach to collecting, organizing, digitalizing and distributing of production, maintenance and quality information throughout a manufacturing plant via and web-based Content Management System (eCMS) user experience.
MOM4 eliminates the need of buying and maintaining multiple costly and specialized software to meet the equivalent customer needs and to have the equivalent benefits that our standardized, yet highly customizable integrated platform provides in the fields of Planning, Scheduling, Execution, Tracking, Reporting and Analyzing.
Benefits
- Enhanced Operational Efficiency: MOM4 streamlines manufacturing processes, reducing downtime, and improving resource utilization. This leads to increased overall operational efficiency.
- Real-Time Visibility: MOM4 provides real-time visibility into production processes, allowing for better monitoring, control, and decision-making. It helps identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies as they occur.
- Improved Quality Control: MOM4 enables real-time quality monitoring and control. They help detect defects early in the production process, reducing scrap and rework.
- Optimized Production Scheduling: MOM4 assists in optimizing production schedules, aligning them with customer demand and available resources. This results in more efficient use of equipment and labor.
- Inventory Management: MOM4 helps manage inventory levels by providing accurate data on materials and products in real-time. This reduces carrying costs and minimizes stockouts.
- Better Compliance and Reporting: MOM4 facilitates compliance with industry regulations and quality standards. They also generate comprehensive reports for regulatory purposes and performance analysis.
- Reduced Costs: By improving efficiency, reducing waste, and minimizing downtime, MOM4 contributes to cost savings in areas such as labor, materials, and energy.
- Faster Time-to-Market: MOM4 enables quicker product development and introduction. They streamline design changes and revisions, reducing the time it takes to bring products to market.
- Enhanced Traceability: Traceability is crucial in industries like food, pharmaceuticals, and aerospace. MOM4 provides end-to-end traceability, helping track products from raw materials to finished goods.
- Predictive Maintenance: MOM4 supports predictive maintenance by monitoring equipment conditions and performance. This helps prevent unexpected breakdowns and reduces maintenance costs.
- Scalability: MOM4 can scale to accommodate changing production volumes and evolving business needs. They are adaptable to the growth of manufacturing operations.
- Data-Driven Decision-Making: MOM4 collects and analyze data from various sources, enabling data-driven decision-making for continuous improvement and optimization.
- Resource Allocation: MOM4 helps allocate resources, such as personnel and equipment, more efficiently, ensuring that production meets demand without overcommitting resources.
- Improved Communication: MOM4 fosters better communication and collaboration between different departments within an organization, including production, quality control, maintenance, and supply chain management.
- Competitive Advantage: Implementing MOM4 can provide a competitive advantage by optimizing processes, reducing costs, and delivering products faster and with higher quality.
Manufacturing Model – Digital Twins
A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical process or product that enhances efficiency and reduces costs in manufacturing. It allows production teams to analyze data sources, decrease defects, and improve production efficiency. It visualizes assets, tracks changes, optimizes performance over the product lifecycle, and offers data for workflow optimization, supply chain management, and product quality. Predictive maintenance and root-cause analysis enhance manufacturing productivity.
The digital twin operates in real time, mirroring actual systems with historical performance knowledge and future potential. It fits within the ISA-95 architecture, serving as a decision support tool for safety, reliability, and profitability improvements. It’s a virtual copy of a system that accurately mimics performance, enabling better planning.
The digital twin provides insights into assets and processes not directly measured, driving agility and convergence across the business. It fosters understanding and action alignment between engineering, operations, supply chain, and more, enhancing overall efficiency and collaboration.
Features
MOM4 supports Digital Twins for Materials, Equipment, Personal, Work / Machine Center and Product Production Rules (receipts) applying IEC 62264 / ISA-95 standards.
- Material Information Model – Material Class, Material Definition, Material Lot, Material Sub Lot, Material Test Specification and Material Test Results
- Equipment Information Model – Equipment Class, Equipment, Equipment Test Specification and Equipment Test Results
- Personnel Information Model – Personnel Class, Person, Personnel Test Specification and Personnel Test Results
- Product Production Rules – Product Definitions, Production Routings, Work/Machine Centers, Bill of Materials / Resources (BOM / BOR), Manufacturing Bill (MB)
Benefits
- Improved Visualization and Monitoring: Digital twins provide real-time representations of materials, physical processes, equipment, and systems. This improves visibility and monitoring, allowing operators and engineers to gain insights into the current state of operations more effectively.
- Optimized Production Processes: Digital twins enable the simulation of production processes, helping manufacturers identify bottlenecks, optimize workflows, and improve overall efficiency. This aligns with the ISA-95 framework’s focus on manufacturing operations management (MOM).
- Reduced Risk and Cost: By testing changes and improvements in a digital twin environment before implementing them in the physical system, manufacturers can reduce the risk of costly errors or disruptions to production.
- Accurate Data for Decision-Making: Digital twins collect and store vast amounts of data, which can be used for historical analysis and decision-making. This aligns with the ISA-95 framework’s emphasis on data exchange between enterprise and control systems.
- Integration with Enterprise Systems: Digital twins can be integrated with enterprise resource planning (ERP), Business Inteligence (BI), and other business systems, enhancing data flow and coordination between different levels of the manufacturing hierarchy.
- Resource Optimization: Digital twins allow for the optimization of resources, including raw materials, equipments and labor, by modeling and simulating different scenarios to identify the most efficient approaches.
- Faster Troubleshooting and Diagnostics: When issues arise in the physical system, digital twins can help diagnose problems more quickly by providing a virtual environment for testing potential solutions.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Digital twins facilitate collaboration between different departments, such as engineering, operations, and maintenance, by providing a common platform for understanding and decision-making.
- Continuous Improvement: Through the use of digital twins, manufacturers can continuously improve their processes and systems, aligning with the ISA-95 framework’s focus on performance optimization.
- Compliance and Quality Assurance: Digital twins can assist in compliance with regulatory standards by providing detailed records of processes and operations. This is particularly important in industries with strict quality and safety regulations.
- Simulation of “What-If” Scenarios: Digital twins allow manufacturers to simulate various scenarios and assess the impact of different decisions on production outcomes, helping with risk assessment and decision-making.
Production Planning and Scheduling
MOM4 Scheduling allows for advanced planning and scheduling, produces a master plan and manages production orders and working orders. Once all customer orders are accepted and entered, they will be grouped by similar products and put into a Production Order (PO) form. In each defined step, there is data about material consumed versus material produced. MOM4 Scheduling measures and accounts for each material transformation (i.e. thickness reduction), such information is tightly integrated to MOM4 Manufacturing Model as original definition and routings are readily available there. Scrap is also accounted for and could be predicted in future with MOM4. Production Orders may be customized later and scheduling can start from beginning or intermediate locations.
Features
- Master Planning
- Detailed production scheduling
- Work Orders
- Re-scheduling, synchronization and order customization
- Simulation
- Bottleneck Optimization
- Algorithm for time and weight calculation of semi-products and scrap per Working Orders
- Bi-directional communication with an ERP (SAP)
Benefits
- Satisfy market requirements such as: short lead time, on-time deliveries, fast and reliable information
- Faster response to shifting customer demand, market conditions, and other unexpected events
- Reduced inventory and cycle time
- Ability to take preventative and corrective action as MOM4 works together with ERP systems to form a coherent information system for the entire production
- ERP systems alone often do not have the necessary detailed information required to schedule specific production activities, production equipment, or personnel, however MOM4 can!
Final Capacity Scheduling
A MOM4 Capacity presents and informs about capacity per equipment, per time, and capacity balance. Capacity planning is the process of determining the production capacity needed by an organization to meet changing demands for its products Overall capacity is separated in 3 main groups: committed, available, and unattainable capacity. Since one machine can work one or two shifts – which can result in 8/16h but availability is 24h a day. Capacity is essential to define the shifts and shows when different machines are available. Based on availability machines can be reserved and better utilized. MOM4Capacity also shows which team works which shift and how many machines are involved in this process. Because MOM4 Capacity is tightly connected to MOM4 Scheduling, the two products work best and result in greatest benefit when purchased together.
Features
- Definition of working periods with templates
- Calendar Management – detailed daily calendar for each cost center including corresponding shifts and teams
- Capacity time slots reservation and visualization
- Capacity balancing and leveling
- Resource Profiles and Templates
- Easy rearrangement of tasks between machines with similar operations
Benefits
- Satisfy market requirements such as short lead time, on-time deliveries, fast and reliable information
- Faster response to shifting customer demand, production conditions, and other unexpected events
- Reduced inventory and cycle time
- The foresight to anticipate and meet future capacity requirements before business processes are impacted
- Reduced risk of service degradation through better management of company assets
- Reduced risk associated with last minute changes to the production plan
Execution, Tracking and Treacebility
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MOM4Execution accounts for execution orders, order tracking, production tracking, data collection, downtime management, and equipment management. Once the master scheduling is ready, it is sent to the production floor for execution. Then it is grouped by predefined parameters in campaigns per machine and corresponding consumer resources. The operator or the control system will signal when and which order must be executed next. Information about the production process is received and stored in a database, enabling it to be collected later for further analysis and reporting. Once a product is finished at its first step, it is marked as such and will continue to the next step automatically. During each process of production quality information is also collected and quality assurance issued. In the case of any downtime during execution, the operator may input information such as reasons and failure. Downtime may be detected from the system itself.
Features
- Dispatch list (campaigns) with Working Orders
- Dispatching presets directly to the controllers
- Product Identification and Traceability
- Work-In-Progress (WIP) inventory
- Automatic data collection
- Validation and audit at each process step
- Material History (Genealogy)
- Downtime management
- Alarms and Events
- External communication with any PLC, DCS, etc
- OPC support
Benefits
- Better visibility of the manufacturing process
- Sustainable production performance improvements
- Ability to take preventative and corrective action
- Make timely adjustments as needed to guarantee maximum efficiency, responsiveness and flexibility on the real-time information available to identify and report problems on the production floor
- Reduced inventory and cycle time, while increasing production throughput
- Enables producers to react continuously and operate at the optimal condition
- Information on when and where each product is at any time, even in intermediate storage
- Real-time production information instantly available to everybody
Warehouse Management
Features
- Work In Process (WIP) Inventory management
- Support for Bar Code Readers / Printers and RFID
- Quality Control and interface to Laboratory Information Systems (LIMS)
- Inventory Rules and Guidelines
- Generation of Loading and Unloading Lists
- Selection of Storage Location and Inter Warehouse Transfer
- Guidance to Crane / Forklift Driver
- Supervision of loading, reloading and unloading
- Maintaining a map of objects in the storage area
- Communication with various Scales and Load Cells
- Communication with ERP and other WMS
- Integration with MS SharePoint
Benefits
- Better visibility, traceability and control of inventory along the plant
- Reduced idle and work time in process inventory resulting in cycle time improvement
- Transportation management with order fulfillment
- Inventory tracking with lot control
- Inventory movement and picking with workload balancing
- Worker productivity tracking and reporting
- Reduced capital tied up in your stock inventory by standardizing on fewer parts.
Maintenance
The Equipment Operations Monitoring module of MOM4 allows customers to take control of their maintenance activities in a simple and reliable way. MOM4 tracks production cycles and accumulates working hours, pieces and accumulated weights per critical equipment (dies, molds, sieves, rolls, etc.). MOM4 enables Preventive Maintenance and supports the mill maintenance manager in scheduling the maintenance intervention. MOM4 keeps historical records for all operations performed on specific equipment.
When combined with MOM4Maintenance our solution yields the greatest benefits for the entire organization.
Features
- Predefined limits with upper and lower boundary
- Specialized modules for Rolls and Die Management
- Real-time equipment monitoring
- Equipment Identification and Traceability
- Historical data
- Automatic data collection
- Alarms and Events
- External communication with any PLC, DCS, etc
- OPC support
Benefits
- Improved performance of your equipment by implementing OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) – helping to reduce unplanned stops and improve plant performance and product quality
- Optimized productivity and asset utilization by better utilizing and managing all resources involved in maintenance
- Reduced maintenance costs and improved uptime by shifting over from traditional preventive maintenance to conditional based and/or predictive maintenances
- Integration of maintenance management into your production execution system
- Maintenance workers productivity tracking and reporting
- Reduced capital tied up in your stock inventory by standardizing on fewer parts
Reports, Analyses and Key Performance Indicators
(KPI)
MOM4 Reports is a versatile reporting system that provides insights into data management and overall production. It allows for the input and collection of information from various operations, which can then be presented through predefined system reports or custom reports created by the user.
These reports are built using Microsoft web part technology, offering a set of integrated controls for creating websites. Users can modify the content, appearance, and behavior of web pages directly from a browser. Personalization features enable users to save their preferences for future sessions without needing developer or administrator intervention.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are periodic measurements based on specific predefined measures for business units or departments. KPIs typically include reports, spreadsheets, or charts related to various aspects like sales, personnel, supply chain, safety, etc. They provide a high-level view of a unit or department’s health through vital statistical information, offering regular insights to business managers.
Features
- Production reports : by shifts, daily or monthly
- Product Quality reports
- Finished product reports
- Quality Assurance
- Maintenance Reports
- Downtime, Pareto Charts, Failing facilities Report
- Engineering Reports
- Consumption Reports, Energy Reports
- KPIs and OEE
- Data retrievable to Excel
- Standard communication with ERP (SAP)
- Integration with MS SharePoint
Benefits
- Full product genealogy and information tracking
- Real-time information available to identify and report problems. Check it, anytime, anywhere from the company intranet using MOM4 rich graphical web-based interface
- Historical data for performance analyses and process optimization. Score cards, KPIs, OEE, etc.
- Personalized page content and layout, tailored to meet specific requirements for all categories of workers and mangers in an enterprise. Business process view from many different perspectives.
- Real-time information available to identify and report problems. Check it, anytime, anywhere from the company intranet using MOM4 rich graphical web-based interface
- Personalized page content and layout, tailored to meet specific requirements for all categories of workers and mangers in an enterprise. Business process view from many different perspectives
- Better informed and empowered operators and managers. Real-time decisions make an efficient supply chain and reduce the waste of time and materials.
- Integration with plant portals such as SharePoint and SAP