The folding-box printing industry uses presses costing close to a million dollars, with expensive downtime for washing.
We know that when a machine is very expensive, it has to run 24/7 to be profitable. Of course, in practice this is impossible, as there are unavoidable reasons for downtime. In fact, there are five categories of reasons why a printing press has to stop operating.
The first cause is start-up or "setup", the second is "washing during production", then comes "preventive maintenance", "breakdowns" and logistical problems leading to "waiting for carton supply".
Our solution
We set up a data collection terminal for each press, linked to it by a magnetic gear rotation sensor.
The software entered the operator's name, the work order number supplied by the ERP, the press number and the machine status: "setup - washing - preventive maintenance - breakdowns (with details) - waiting for supply". The supplier code was also entered to correlate the carton source and washdowns, which are closely linked to the quality of the carton, which produces fewer particles if it is of better quality.
In all, some thirty statuses can be entered at the touch of a button, or automatically detected by the machine's rotation.
We had detailed reports by operator and by reason for stoppage, compiled automatically.
Benefits
Thanks to the reports, the customer was able to reduce machine downtime due to washing by 21%, on its five gigantic KOMORI machines, simply by confronting its suppliers with the evidence of washing reports and putting them in competition on this precise parameter.
In addition, analysis of the reports showed that there was 5% too much preventive maintenance. The customer reviewed the causes behind the logistical waits to reduce them by 6%, and replaced a unit whose failure prevention was unnecessarily expensive compared with the depreciation of a new unit.
In all, annual savings exceeded 450,000$.
