GE claims that Plant Pulse Optimizer delivers broader visibility to all plant personnel quickly and improves operational execution by coordinating isolated activities, while improving operator engagement and motivation, resulting in a marked improvement in labor utilization.
“There’s nothing more critical in manufacturing than staying ahead of your competitors,” says Jennifer Bennett, GE Digital general manager for manufacturing software. “But all too often, before you finish switching over to a new product, market demands shift yet again. If you can’t match these cycle times, your customers won’t hesitate to take their business elsewhere. Plant Pulse Optimizer allows you the visibility to flexibly adjust to synchronize and optimize your plant so you can have that competitive advantage.”
According to GE, lack of plant-wide visibility often results in lost opportunities, and manufacturers need to easily integrate, access, analyze and visualize data to improve collaboration and information transparency within the plant. The Plant Pulse Optimizer provides a panoramic view of all production activity for all factory personnel via real-time, multi-shift based KPIs (machine-material-labor-product intelligence) as scorecards. The module provides insights focused on production analytics to organize manufacturing data into a structure to provide information on inventory, yield and achievement of production plans. The module is also device- and back-end agnostic, enabling it to be connected to both GE and non-GE manufacturing-operations systems.
Plant Pulse Optimizer is an out-of-the-box solution that requires minimal configuration, and its consumer-grade visualization technology is designed to require little training. The “card”-based views aid in execution for various roles within the plant, with associated drill-down cards to allow quick identification of bottlenecks at the operation level.
“Plant Pulse Optimizer will support manufacturing leaders with clear visibility to KPIs in a high paced environment,” says Zishan Siddiqui, Brilliant Factory IT leader, GE Healthcare. “Our focus is increased efficiency and productivity, reduced scrap and increased product quality. Plant Pulse Optimizer automatically pulls KPI data in near real-time to visualize via production dashboards.”
“It is important to create a repeatable, consistent and cost effective approach to connecting machines thereby providing the visibility necessary to form the foundation of the Digital Thread across the complete enterprise where projects flex with business changes and priorities,” says Bennett. “Integrating and aggregating data from design to service and leveraging analytics to support optimal decision-making allows manufacturers to drive improvements in end-to-end production. Analyzing data in context and providing the right information at the right time allows for better decision support throughout the manufacturing process. Data-driven analytics encompassing machines, material, people and process will transform the factories of today into Brilliant Factories.”
Plant Pulse Optimizer is available at the end of June.