Challenge
The plant manager of a medium-sized production facility wanted to keep tackle the sites productivity. The site needed to tackle the problem in two key areas:
- Reduce wait time for parts - employees were waiting in the tool crib line for 10-15 minutes, at least 2 to 3 times a day.
- Remove stock outs - they were experiencing large amount of downtime on CNC machines due to running out of parts.
Solution
The site installed two industrial vending machines in two different locations on the facility floor giving point of use access to the employees along with full smart control to the business via the cloud based Arcturus software. Tools and parts were now vended to employees where they were working.
Result
- The plant has recovered 30 minutes per employee per day in productive time.
- Tool usage has decreased from £294,000 the previous year to an annual spend of £205,000 - while business is increasing at about 10% per year.
- Stock out have been completely removed helping increase CNC machine uptime.
- Stores attendant now performs higher-value tasks, since they no longer have to keep issuing the same items all day.
- Purchasing is more efficient, due to automatic reporting and reordering has been streamlined.
