Streamlining physical plant production and workflow with virtual tools

Extrusion molding manufacturer, Shoreline Plastics, has strict tolerances for their products. In their operations, quality and compliance is the responsibility of line operators and the line supervisor/foreman to make sure output is within spec. There are a number of mechanical reasons for product to be outside of spec, including puller speed, machine temperature, environmental temperature and more. The line operators and supervisors should be performing periodic checks to make sure everything is operating correctly. Because the production lines run a 24/7 schedule it is difficult to make sure everyone is staying on task during late night and weekend hours. It is after these off times that owners will show back up to work only to discover the plant has run tens of thousands of dollars of scrap. These costly mistakes, due to employees not performing their routine tasks timely, impact profitability, delivery times, increased recycling needs, and so much more.

Canvasblu partnered with Shoreline Plastics and identified 10 checkpoints that need to occur every two hours or less on every line. The checkpoints were used as the center for developing business rules and requirements that would be disseminated through a custom, easy to use, mobile-first web application.

The software is built with intelligence that prompts employees to act, triggers notifications, and alerts plant managers when tasks have failed to be accomplished within the identified timeframe.

The initial release of this tool requires manual inputs in the form of images (being captured from the mobile device) and manually entered values (coming straight off the machines).

The tool not only reports on employee performance and compliance, but also reports on completed product, scrap product, line, status, and operations, and more. It has been built with a centralized scoreboard that sets in the plant managers, office, providing intelligence across all production lines, simultaneously, and in real time .

It is estimated that this tool in a single week of operation can save five times the expensive building it.

The initial release of the tool is intentionally manual, so workflow checks can be fully optimized. Planned updates, that are underway, integrate automated measuring technology that removes many of the human factors and will result in greater data integrity.

The tool was built on the proprietary Cloudblu Platform, authored by Canvasblu Digital, using Microsoft .NET8 technologies.