Fabricator Realizes Huge Cost Savings
Impulse Manufacturing is an elite full-service metal fabrication company located in Dawsonville, Georgia. A perennial member of Fabricator Magazine's "Fab 40" list of top metal fabrication companies, Impulse offers a wide range of capabilities from simple laser cutting services and high volume stampings to complex weldments and assemblies.
Since you can't improve what you don't measure, when Impulse wanted to reduce downtime, they started with ShopFloorConnect. ShopFloorConnect measures uptime, downtime, reasons for downtime, as well as production counts, and displays the information in real time throughout the factory.
"Before we installed ShopFloorConnect, we had a difficult time ascertaining why a particular machine was down" says Clay Reiser, Director of Business Development for Impulse Manufacturing, "And downtime on the floor translated directly to lost productivity and lost dollars on our bottom line."
Impulse has over 35 machines connected to ShopFloorConnect including press brakes, welders, 2-D lasers, saws, tube lasers, a paint line, and punch presses.
In addition to the real-time "Visual Factory" displays, ShopFloorConnect automatically generates customized downtime and OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) reports.
"After the initial installation, we saw an instantaneous 10% increase in productivity on our shop floor", Reiser said, "That translated into a payback of less than 3 months."