Challenge

Koch Werkzeugbau GmbH (‘Koch’) is a German family-owned tool manufacturer. Its production data on the plant floor was being manually recorded, which meant data was not being evaluated until days later. Koch was looking for a solution to digitise production data for its decorative elements manufacturing process. It was hoping to increase productivity by identifying production delays, analysing the reasons for them and feeding the findings back into the production process.

Activity such as duration, reason and frequency of downtimes needed to be recorded in real-time from multiple interfaces, captured and displayed via a web server and evaluated over the timeframe of a single shift. Koch also wanted to display the KPIs on the factory floor to visualise performance.

Benefit to customer

Red Lion devised a solution with a suite of networking products centred on its Crimson automation software, which offers data collection, data processing and visualisation. Data is now visible for all employees so that immediate direct counter measurements can be taken on the plant floor. This collection and analysis of data led to a 10-12% increase in production. The flexibility of the Crimson software also allows a dynamic adaptation of production for any future upgrades Koch might decide to pursue.