Manual Assembly Line Performance Improvement for The Senator Group

Senator logoThe Senator Group is one of Europe’s largest office furniture manufacturers, with a team of more than one thousand people, an annual turnover in excess of £100 million and an export business that ships all over the world. When the company wanted a way to monitor assembly performance on an individual cell level they chose PlantRun.


The company had efficiency measures on a department level and timings for products in their BOM, but these didn’t allow analysis of an individual’s performance and the efficiency measures were not live. They were looking to implement a system in which the shop floor worker can scan the product in to the system and instantly see the target time for that specific product. They also wanted to provide each cell with live efficiency ratings.


Assembly instructions were in place for each of their products, however, the assemblers on the shop floor could not easily access the instructions. Therefore, the system had to give assemblers visuals of the product, alongside build instructions, within the work cell.

A PlantRun system was supplied that uses tablets as operator interfaces. Each tablet is equipped with a wired barcode scanner that allows the assembler to scan a works order barcode to start an assembly. Each product type has a target build time and the system tracks the actual build time and requires a reason to be selected for slow build.


On screen metrics gives feedback to the assembler of their performance. An on-screen button determines the end of each build. If they need to refer to build instructions these can be displayed on screen also at the touch of a button.


Periods of non-activity causes the screen to display a request for downtime reason button. Touching the button displays another screen of buttons each associated with a downtime reason for the assembler to select from.

Full reporting and analysis is available in real time with built in tools (or data can be exported to preferred reporting packages) which means that management have easy access to all the information needed for better decision making.

PlantRun Display Node hardware allows connection of large screen TV in the assembly and office areas to display live performance information of all assembly cells. Display Node enables flexible display with static or scrolling screens of information including KPI from the system as well as custom messages such as Health & Safety or cyber security warnings, visitor welcome or web pages.

Emailing option enables system alerts to be sent to managers emails and for the system to generate reports at timed intervals and send them in pdf format to user emails – a significant time saver for regular meetings.

Assembly staff can request attention from an engineer, team leader etc by touching a button on the tablet screen. Requests are shown on the large screen displays as a priority interrupt or sent via email. The system can track request response and resolution times, which are useful metrics especially for maintenance departments.

Features

  • Central PC server for data processing in real-time
  • Wireless tablets provide compact low-cost operator interface
  • Barcode scanners connected to each tablet allow product and batch tracking
  • On screen display provides countdown timer for target assembly time
  • PlantRun captures accurate assembly time for each product and tracks slow operations
  • Work instructions can be displayed for product variants
  • Periods of downtime are captured and reasons for long stoppages captured

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