Product category:
Plantwide control
News Release from: Industrial Electronic Automation | Subject: ICEberg information system
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 08 February 2000
'Beautifully simple' real-time
information system
Industrial Electronic Automation Ltd (B2T) announce ICEberg, a real-time, run based information system designed to improve manufacturing performance and provide maximum return on investment in plant.
Industrial Electronic Automation Ltd (B2T) announce ICEberg, a real-time, run based information system designed to improve manufacturing performance and provide maximum return on investment in plant and processes ICEberg's beautifully simple graphical production benchmarks make trends simple to spot and show results of change quickly and clearly, while beneath the surface is an immense power to detect and analyse trends and to drill down to the very heart of the production process
This article was originally published on Engineeringtalk on 7 Sep 2000 at 8.00am (UK)
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Although ICEberg uses the latest computing and data processing tools you don't have to be an IT specialist to use it.
It was designed by production managers, for production managers and can be installed top down to give immediate results for very little effort.
On the surface, three charts show performance over the current, recent and long term periods as set by the production management against their key business drivers.
The position of the indicator shows the average value for each period and the top and bottom of the bars show best and worst performance allowing instantaneous comparisons of spread as well as average values.
For more detail, ICEberg's On Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) tools allow managers to drill down into the data underlying the trend display to quickly identify the root causes.
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Because ICEberg works by comparing batches of data, it can deliver immediate results without needing defined units of measurement so no complex calibrations are needed.
Several powerful display formats such as a 'stacked bar cube' allow comparisons of shifts, machines, products, dates even individual operators.
An intuitive production manager, armed with information from ICEberg, will be able to identify the key factors influencing performance very quickly and simply and can then focus effort and investment to better effect than ever before.
A key advantage of ICEberg is that it can be installed top down to give immediate results for very little effort.
Production managers can start by configuring the displays and reports they want to see using their own familiar production management terminology and user-friendly menu driven set up procedures.
By simply populating the package by manually entering existing production data, they can carry out investigations using ICEberg's proven benchmark techniques and judge the benefits for themselves.
ICEberg is designed to deliver business benefits quickly and is designed to be installed by production management to achieve a fast return on investment.
ICEberg is designed from the ground up with excellent networking and communications facilities to make it easy to link to existing automation systems and so cut the cost of automated data collection.
Where new investment in data collection is needed early results from even modest amounts of manually entered data can be used to focus the investment in the areas that will have the most effect.
Of course in the production environment not all data is real time and ICEberg makes it easy to synchronise manually collected batch information such as QA lab reports, to present the full picture.
Whether or not automated data collection is introduced, the ICEberg system will accumulate huge amounts of useful data which can be shared via ICEberg's easy networking capabilities with ERP systems such as SAP or Oracle.
With ICEberg this can be done AFTER it has been installed and tested, there is no need to commit to integration in advance and no penalty for doing it later.
This 'loose coupled technology' dramatically reduces risk.
ICEberg comes complete with a comprehensive support package including periodic software upgrades and access to both IT and unrivalled production management expertise through PA Consultants who will assist production management with the consultancy benchmarking techniques that are built into the product and the use of these techniques to deliver business benefits.
There is also an ICEberg user club which provides a forum for the exchange of valuable information and techniques between like minded managers with potentially valuable experience of using the product in other industries and environments.
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