shop floor automations

Legacy SFA Blogs – Edition 3

We know from years of experience that legacy machines are still an important part of the operations for many shop floors. In this edition, there is a heavy focus on our USB to Floppy solutions.

Back in 2010, we remember when the Floppy Drive Emulator made it’s New Product debut with Modern Machine Shop. This article states this product will “replace 3.5-inch floppy disk drives and media used to store NC programs and other CNC-related files used on the shop floor. The floppy drive replacement features a USB interface to transfer files from a PC with a USB port to virtually any CNC control with a floppy disk drive.” Read the rest of the piece here.

Fast forwarding to the Summer of 2016, Modern Machine Shop also helped introduce another new product for us – the Multi Connect. In this article, they shared that is is “compatible with a range of machine monitoring software packages including Scytec’s DataXchange and Predator’s Machine Data Collection. The device combines a PLC, Wireless, Ethernet, Serial RS232 and MTConnect. The hardware connects to a variety of equipment via built-in digital I/O, which can be overlaid on existing signals for monitoring cycle start, cycle stop, alarm and status indicators such as stack lights.”

In September of 2016 they shared our announcement of a new hire, with our brand new Marketing Coordinator.

We have been in business for close to 20 years, with many customers having been with us for over a decade. We would love to start a long term relationship with your shop floor to help increase OEE and productivity. Call (877) 611-5825 or fill out a contact form

the Cloud

Become a Cloud technology MFG Adapter

The manufacturing industry is slowly becoming a younger job field. The Manufacturing Institute states that 3.5 Million manufacturing jobs will become available within the next decade due to Millions of baby boomers retiring from the workforce in the near future. There are also new jobs created because of organic business growth to take into consideration. These new jobs will definitely be filled by a younger generation that embraces Cloud technology in their daily lives.

With a new generation coming into the manufacturing landscape, which contributes over $2 Trillion dollars to the American economy each year (according to the National Association of Manufacturers), they are going to understand that any time or production lost on their shop floor will make a huge impact on many people. This is why it is no surprise that 80 percent of large North American companies have implemented or are planning to adopt Cloud services, as the workforce gets younger.

“On the shop floor, manufacturers are aggregating data to gain insight on machine and equipment performance, part tracking, and even how to optimize [the] shop floor layout,” Kathy Webster said, who is the Media Communications Manager for The Association of Manufacturing Technology (AMT). “This is especially true as pressure mounts for manufacturers to bring products to market more quickly.”

“Cloud solutions like these are often quick to roll out and easy to customize,” Kathy continues. “Many also offer 24/7 support, meaning less stress on a company’s IT staff. They are easy to access at any time from anywhere, making them a natural fit for collaboration on supply chain, distribution, and service.”

Aside from the benefits that Cloud software and applications can have on your shop floor, these solutions also tend to be more economical, too. At trade shows that Shop Floor Automations attends, guests are astounded that there is a machine monitoring option that costs a mere $45 per month, per machine!

Want more information on how to embrace IIoT on your shop floor? Call us at (877) 611-5825 or fill out a contact form, so we can get back to you. 

shop floor man

Halloween Shop Floor Man Comic

It’s a little late, but we wanted to make sure we got our Halloween issue of “Shop Floor Man Presents” up here on our blog. In this comic strip, we see it takes A LOT to scare Shop Floor Man (you can click the image to see the comic larger).

More about our manufacturing and machinist themed cartoon creation:

“With an eye toward a younger manufacturing audience, the company has launched a Web comic series,” says Jedd Cole of TechSpex. “With the intention of carving out a space for manufacturing-related humor on social media, especially Twitter.”

“The comic appears in two-panel stories in which the main character, Shop Floor Man, shows life with SFA’s solutions compared with exaggerated horrors he faces elsewhere,” Cole continued. “Other comics will riff on familiar trials faced by machinists everywhere, as well as other industry-related humor.”

Shop Floor Automations (SFA) is doing its job to attract a younger manufacturing audience by working its social media channels and developing a comic strip series called Shop Floor Man Presents,” Christina M. Fuges of MoldMaking Technologywrites.

“Finally, there’s a cartoon character metalworkers can embrace,” Chris Koepfer from Production Machining writes. “He is the brainchild from a collaboration among the owner and two employees of California-based Shop Floor Automations (SFA)…the entire company contributes ideas and feedback for the comic, which makes it fun for the employees to get involved and share their shop floor experiences.”

“With a younger MFG audience on the horizon, SFA is looking to make an impact within the social media landscape, just as the company has made its mark in the shop floor automation field,” Manufacturing Tomorrow published on October 13th.

Read more about Shop Floor Man! To get solutions to make your manufacturing shop floor more productive, call (877) 611-5825! You can also fill out our contact form.

shop floor automationsLegacy SFA Blogs – Edition 1

We at Shop Floor Automations know that your legacy machines are important to you. We also take the same care in preserving our past press appearances, so we welcome you to our Legacy SFA Blog Series from the Shop Floor Automations blog!

In the first edition, we invite you to look back on articles and ads in:

Manufacturing News, October 2016 – page 35 (for the West issue) – In this issue, we talk about Predator Touch HMI and why it will benefit your shop floor manufacturing needs. The machine monitoring, big button interface is a program we have been excited to share with the public the past few months, and we are glad the manufacturing publications are helping us spread the word. Read the piece from MFG News.

Modern Machine Shop, October 2016 – on page 149 (and on their website) – We got to talk further here about Predator’s Touch HMI. “The HMI is designed to provide an easier way for operators on the shop floor to interact with management and Predator Software. Shop Floor Automations can customize color coding, layouts, prompts and third-party applications.” We invite you to read more.

American Machinist, November 2016 – on their website – our new WiFi USB Connect product is featured. The post states “The device serves as an easy and economic shop floor upgrade. Data can be stored on a remote PC, or locally in the device’s memory, with the device itself providing up to 128 MB of storage.” Read more.

Speaking of Modern Machine Shop, they also published a piece on our new creation, Shop Floor Man, in early November 2016! “With an eye toward a younger manufacturing audience, the company has launched a Web comic series called ‘Shop Floor Man Presents’ with the intention of carving out a space for manufacturing-related humor on social media, especially Twitter.” Read the piece.

Want more information on our hardware, software and support solutions? Call (877) 611-5825 to tell us what is going on with your shop floor! You can also fill out a contact form.

shop floor man

Shop Floor Man

Wow! The response to our new creation Shop Floor Man has been wild. We at Shop Floor Automations had an idea to try and represent what our customers, who work in the manufacturing industry, go through via a comic strip character. The reception is more than we hoped for.

“With an eye toward a younger manufacturing audience, the company has launched a Web comic series,” says Jedd Cole of TechSpex. “With the intention of carving out a space for manufacturing-related humor on social media, especially Twitter.”

“The comic appears in two-panel stories in which the main character, Shop Floor Man, shows life with SFA’s solutions compared with exaggerated horrors he faces elsewhere,” Cole continued. “Other comics will riff on familiar trials faced by machinists everywhere, as well as other industry-related humor.”

Shop Floor Automations (SFA) is doing its job to attract a younger manufacturing audience by working its social media channels and developing a comic strip series called Shop Floor Man Presents,” Christina M. Fuges of MoldMaking Technology writes.

“Finally, there’s a cartoon character metalworkers can embrace,” Chris Koepfer from Production Machining writes. “He is the brainchild from a collaboration among the owner and two employees of California-based Shop Floor Automations (SFA)…the entire company contributes ideas and feedback for the comic, which makes it fun for the employees to get involved and share their shop floor experiences.”

“With a younger MFG audience on the horizon, SFA is looking to make an impact within the social media landscape, just as the company has made its mark in the shop floor automation field,” Manufacturing Tomorrow published on October 13th.

See our archive of Shop Floor Man comics

“This is great for social media,” Fuges of MoldMaking Technology stated. She wrote about how our Marketing Coordinator “heard how social media isn’t valuable for this line of business, but believes this could not be further from the truth.”

“Obviously, the comic serves as a marketing and promotional tool for the company. But it’s also an intriguing entrance into a sphere not many other manufacturers have explored to date, one with the potential to tap into the lived experience of younger, millennial audience,” Cole of TechSpex continues, from his piece. “In the sometimes convoluted Venn diagram of manufacturers, millennials and social media, Web comics could be a particularly effective way to bridge culture gaps and to foster community through shared experience.”

Fuges agrees with the point of view of our Marketing Coordinator in getting a younger audience into the manufacturing industry, no matter the job focus. “You have middle school kids, high school teens and college-aged young adults who we are trying to get into this industry, or people like the military veterans being trained at organizations like Workshops for Warriors. These people of these various age groups are attached to their devices and social media, and we can reach them and show them this industry is a community.”

“Laughter and humor are part of the fabric of life and enjoyed by almost everyone,” says Koepfer at Production Machining. “Shop Floor Man can demonstrate that manufacturing can be a fun industry in which to work.”

Want to see more of Shop Floor Man, or have feedback on some future adventures he can go on? Tweet SFA on Twitter at both @SFA_inc and @ShopFloorHumor. You can always call us, too, at (877) 611-5825!

 

mfg dayMFG Day 2016 is Coming

Shop Floor Automations (SFA) will present to our audience a week-long celebration of MFG DAY, which takes place October 7th. The National Holiday is a celebration of how the industry has evolved in recent years, with a heavy focus on pulling in a future generation to keep the job field thriving.

SFA will roll out the red carpet for MFG DAY by providing followers a day-to-day parade of content relative to the Holiday the week it occurs. Informative blogs, a video, maybe even an infographic, will be just some of the fun content to experience. We may even give out one of their hilarious G-code T-Shirts, but definitely, count on a discount to celebrate the Holiday in our online store!

Could an MFG DAY related strip from our new comic series called “Shop Floor Man” (which is pictured to the top left and may be clicked on to magnify) be coming? We are also reaching out to some of their amazing customers in the Manufacturing field to get their stories and insight from the work they do, which will hopefully be included in these celebrations.

Follow what we will be up to on Twitter at both @SFA_inc and @ShopFloorHumor. We are also on Instagram and Facebook under the username ShopFloorAutomations. Look for all of our MFG Day related content on our website blog. Fill out our contact form, so we can get in touch with you on your time.

Remember – when tweeting about MFG Day, please use the tag #MFGday16 or use it to keep up with the fun events on this momentous day!

A Haas CNC controller with a clip art "Vacancy" sign hanging from it. Behind the controller are another CNC machine and controller. The text says "SFA evaluates the manufacturing skills gap".Closing the MFG Skills Gap

To quote Bob Dylan – “the times, they are a-changin‘”. This also applies to the manufacturing industry and a serious demand for skilled workers in this field.

With today’s generation of youth, it seems as if they all want to be YouTube stars, singers, actors, artists – anything creative to get fame and to make a lot of money is the appeal. Many organizations are working hard to peak the interest of today’s youth into the manufacturing industry, which falls into the realm of more technological or scientific trades (AKA: STEM). They are trying to convey to this upcoming generation of workers that they can find creativity, the possibility of prominence, and good pay with jobs in the manufacturing sector. 

There are notable efforts from multiple organizations to combat the very near future’s need for skilled manufacturing workers. One example is the SME Education Foundation, who in a genius move also own the domain ManufacturingisCool.com.

You may remember a piece we did on Workshops for Warriors, which focuses on getting well-deserved military veterans into manufacturing jobs. We also tip our hats to NIMS (the National Institute for Metalworking Skills), the ML Council, The Manufacturing Institute, NAM (the National Association of Manufacturers), AMT (the Association for Manufacturing Technology), and NTMA (the National Tooling and Machining Association) for helping to close the skills gap in this area.

What more can be done? Recently, the Haas Technical Education Center has been encouraging those in any aspect of the manufacturing industry to let Congress know that the need currently ranges from moderate to serious for these skilled positions. With the help of NAM and the Manufacturing Institute, they are looking for help in passing H.R. 5587 AKA the Strengthening Career & Technical Education for the 21st Century Act.

More information about H.R. 5587 can be found via the National Skills Coalition site. If you are in need of technical solutions to help your shop floor thrive, please call us at 877-611-5825. You may also fill out our contact form

A clipping of an article about SFA and Touch HMI Software, accompanied by an angled view of a Floppy Drive Emulator.

Manufacturing News – June 2016

Shop Floor Automations was featured in Manufacturing News this past month of June 2016. In the article, we spoke about Touch HMI Software from Predator, as well as our Floppy Drive Emulators.

“Touch HMI has the ability for wired and wireless support, as well as configuration to communication with CNCs, CMMs, test stands, and other devices,” we stated, of Touch HMI software.

In regards to the Floppy Emulator, which was once called the FD Connect but is now part of our Floppy Connect line, we wrote: “a CNC control that still uses a floppy drive can easily switch to using a USB drive.” The Floppy Connect line is off-the-shelf compatible with Haas, but it is also compatible with other machines, with the help of our technicians.

Click Read our piece, plus the whole issue! Call (877) 611-5825 for more information.

The founders of SFA have many years of experience providing effective solutions to manufacturers large and small from coast to coast. Their expertise in designing and implementing DNC and Shop Floor Networks allows them to take the best hardware and software products to the next level. That level is a fully implemented, turnkey solution tailored specifically for a customer’s requirements and environments.

SFA has become the industry leader in Shop Floor Communications and Machine Monitoring Solutions. Totally redefining what “Shop Floor Automation” solutions should be.  With thousands of customers from across the United States, Mexico, Canada, Europe and Asia, SFA was called upon by other vendors to provide other solutions that could be met by our knowledge, support and sales experience of the manufacturing industry.  In 2010, SFA aligned itself with these vendors to close the loop with maintenance management software, job management and scheduling software, hardware manufacturers, and machine tool companies.

CNC WestCheck out our latest ad in CNC West Magazine from the April/May 2016 issue.

Predator Touch HMI is the latest edition to our software line and we are excited to spread the word with CNC West Magazine!

Predator Touch HMI supports creating easy to use big button manufacturing shop floor interfaces for data collection, process, or shop floor automation. Clicking or touching a big button will trigger one or more actions. Often Predator Touch HMIs replace bar code readers and QR code readers.

This Windows-based software is licensed per site. An unlimited number of HMIs can be created and installed on Windows-based PCs, CNCs, CMMs, test stands, and other shop floor equipment. Predator Touch HMI is designed for today’s security requirements with most functions running on the server via Predator DNC, MDC or PDM. For example, email messages are sent from a central Predator DNC server and not from individual shop floor PCs running Predator Touch HMI.

Tweet us at @SFA_inc to tell us what you think, or call us if you have questions at 877-611-5825!

Are Your Machines Really Cutting?

A manufacturer that is distinctive for its attention to in-cycle machining productivity describes its efforts to obtain efficiency improvements outside of the machining cycle. The shop’s primary tool is a simple, daily, graphical recap that illustrates when each machine tool was and was not making parts AKA machine monitoring.

The procedures that seem efficient and the procedures that are efficient might be two different things. And telling the difference requires data.

The machining cycle is one area in which this idea is strikingly applied. One of those co-owners of the Wright City, Missouri, manufacturer—engineering vice president Jerry Halley—spent much of his career with aircraft maker McDonnell Douglas, which became Boeing during his time there.

Mr. Halley demonstrated that small tools used at the specific, harmonic spindle speeds that avoid chatter can cut deeply enough and quickly enough to remove material more efficiently than traditional rough cutting.

Because the equipment was “as good as its going to get,” the company had to find a way to continue winning efficiency gains so it could continue delivering cost savings. Not only did competitiveness require this, the formally specified cost-reduction targets of OEM customers required this as well.

To discover these sources of additional savings, Tech Manufacturing began measuring its entire process. The company began to measure not just its cycle time and not just the processing of individual parts, but the entire performance of its CNC machines around the clock. Implementing machine monitoring software from Scytec, the company began to measure the in-cycle and out-of-cycle time of 11 CNC machines. Now, company leaders in the office and on the shop floor all study a daily, visual printout of just how much machining time each of those machines delivered over the course of the previous workday.

The first result of doing this, says Mr. Halley, was an almost immediate 5-percentage-point improvement in measured performance. That boost was the early return on simply paying attention to this performance for the first time. And that boost hinted at an important insight, one that the company validated as it went on to find further performance gains with the data. Namely: Even in a seemingly efficient shop, there is still plenty of chronic inefficiency just waiting to be addressed.

The Scytec software is simpler than other machine-monitoring systems that Tech Manufacturing evaluated. Other systems had more capability than the management of this company thought it would use, at least at first. Scytec’s modularity makes it possible to buy up into additional capability over time. For now, though, Mr. Halley’s belief—a belief that has proven true—is that significant process improvement can be won just from the simple measurement of when the machines are and are not making parts.

At the start, that efficiency was 52 percent. Scytec told the company’s team that this is reasonably good. Shops generally assume they are far more productive than they really are. Thirty to 40 percent efficiency is common, said Scytec, and the software company has had machine-shop customers that initially measured an efficiency below 10 percent. Now, after two years of monitoring performance every day and responding to yellow events, Tech Manufacturing is consistently running at an efficiency of 65 percent.

The goal is to reach 70, says Mr. Halley. Getting there will be hard, because the reality of diminishing returns has set in. After two years of improvement, the inefficiencies remaining to be discovered relate to increasingly minor or increasingly rare events.

Shop Floor Automatons is the largest re-seller of Scytec software, specializing in DataXChange.

Read the full article here or call us at (877) 611-5825