We are excited to roll out these Custom MES Stations to our various buildings this week. A couple of the advantages to being a steel manufacturer and powder coat facility is that we can make these in our shops.
Each one contains a non-fan (heat-sink case) design, 12-gen, i5, 10-core processor with 16 GB of ram (I know overkill, but the price was right) and has a 27" screen with dust proof keyboards and mice. They also have a NetSum Hand scanner and wheels for mobility. Safety-yellow (and black, so -go Steelers!).
I thought I would share these with you. This is our 2nd design. The next design will solve a couple of āwishesā for us. We might market these, who knows?
Let me know what you think and what you are using for your MES stations.
No, we wonāt print at these stations. But there are various printers set about. We will mainly use these to collect time and look at current and upcoming queues - Simple Check-in and Check-out.
Nothing better than āhomemadeā with regard to getting the exact functionality you need! But sometimes, āhomemadeā doesnāt look so pretty either.
Itās a great skill. The CPO and the production manager made me ātryā welding to understand the process better (MIG and TIG). Iām pretty bad, but I can get a straight line nowā¦ ha! I think the master welders in our shop have JEDI powersā¦ I have no idea how they feel the flow, guide the stream, and make amazing beads in those welding helmets. -props to all the serious welders out there!
How do you make sure they have power at all times and do they run off of WiFi? That is the issue we have in our Steel manufacturing/Powder Coat factory. They always seem to want the stations set up where there is not any power and not a network cable. Some of our welding machines can get in the way of WiFi at times so we have to use ethernet cables for networking.
Just curious.
We have dropped Ethernet to each station. We have also made sure or put AC outlets within 5 feet of each station. Our testing showed WiFi was not an option for the same reasons you have stated. I have both an Ethernet and power, 12 ft, yellow cord for each. They wonāt be moving much from where we put them. I also bought yellow coreduct for the floor.
Can confirm from experience (Iām guessing you can to?), thatās the right combination! A fan dragging conductive dust through a box tends to not be great for longevity for some reason. Those are some cool workstations!
Wifi can work to an extent if itās thoughtfully considered so everyone gets a solid line of sight from a couple of wifi points. Really depends on what your airspace looks like, if thereās a lot of vertical storage then wifiās no good. Points near big brake press work practically has to be hard wired too, all that sheet metal flapping around is pretty effective at jamming wifi.
Visibility and loss prevention (i.e. where the hell is the tabletā¦)
Permanent Location (although we can move these as they have wheels)
Half of our workforce is old and canāt see well (27" monitors) -something anybody under 30 never thinks ofā¦
Half of our workforce has trouble with any technology - gloves, dust, tablet gestures, small screens, and dirt with the tablets creates problems for us
Computers allow for additional functionality (beyond MES) for some of our people (engineers, planners, etc.)
Ethernet is a must and itās easy to replace bad cables
Provides a space for disbursement of information (notes, etc.) or to look at physical papers
Not trying to start an argument but collection of my thoughts-> After all this forum is about brain stormingā¦
Visibility and loss prevention (i.e. where the hell is the tabletā¦)
ā We have a common place where all tables are kept. After the morning huddle, they take the tablets for the section and go to the specific area of operation. End of shift, they bring it back and put for charging. Takes care of lost tablets and charging issue.
Permanent Location (although we can move these as they have wheels)
Half of our workforce is old and canāt see well (27" monitors) -something anybody under 30 never thinks ofā¦
ā Tablets are not implemented everywhere. For some operations, desktops makes sense.
We also have a giant monitor in the middle of the operation that show exact status of each operation. They donāt need to squint on tablets
Half of our workforce has trouble with any technology - gloves, dust, tablet gestures, small screens, and dirt with the tablets creates problems for us
->If tablets are not suitable, desktops will do even worse unless we do fan less and whole bunch of other things to make it work. Better option in such cases is to use some alternatives like cameras/IoT etc.
Computers allow for additional functionality (beyond MES) for some of our people (engineers, planners, etc.)
ā Agreed but wonder how many people need it and a PDF or image can be shown on a large over head monitor if needed.
Ethernet is a must and itās easy to replace bad cables
ā Agree in some cases but if you have the budget, private cellular is the next best alternative. Ethernet is better suited for chatty applications. Wireless opens up lot of opportunities to be able to dynamically add resources.
Provides a space for disbursement of information (notes, etc.) or to look at physical papers
Always charged, and always has power
The plant managers insisted ")
->Plant managers also needs to consider the needs of future workforce. They might not even know about the ability to automatically balancing resources.
Well done!
We were also considering a similar solution with MES, and your approach gives us more motivation to think ahead. Could you share how many jobs you typically handle on average and the frequency of operation completion? Additionally, how do you manage entering the EMPID? We are concerned about users entering the wrong EMPID and are looking for an easier way to capture it, such as using FACE ID or a biometric device. I agree that tablets might not be suitable in such conditions. Do you have any specific reasons for not choosing an all-in-one PC?
I like the idea of the modular approach to fixing these when we have a problem with the stations. For instance: a welder knocks off the monitor, or something happens to the screen or box. Screens are pretty cheap to replace. We spent a lot of time trying tablets in different areas and decided against it for numerous reasons. We do have some tablets available for certain people and mobile use.
The reason for the wheels and that the machines are meant to be ālocalā not mobile is simply because we have large items that require, at times, different ways to move things around to make the most efficient use of our floor space.
We are logging in with the Employee Badge and scan. You can set it up to where they donāt even know their ID and they just have their barcode. Epicor, IMHO, has not done enough with allowing better spacing of the LOGIN/CLOCKIN and LOGOUT buttons. RFID would be a very cool future implementation for us (down the road) for logins.
We would like to find a way to program the screen so that when itās idle, simply scanning the barcoded employee badge would automatically enter the user into the system as a logged-in stateā¦
