Plantnode exposes Real Time Performance Monitoring's
critical success factor: Machine Truth.

Plantnode: Your Firm Foundation for Continuous Improvement

Plantnode accelerates Continuous Improvement:

• empowers shop floor employees and increases production;
• helps engineers to reduce down-time;
• delivers 100% accurate data to improve the quality of strategic decisions;
• installs very quickly for immediate benefits and rapid ROI.

Please read on and, if you'd like to know more, complete the contact form to the right and we'll contact you as soon as we can.

Continuous Improvements with foundations of sand

Continuous Improvement Programmes in Production are built on data collected during the manufacturing process. And, incidentally, that same data feeds through costing systems into customer quotations and price lists, so it’s important for margin calculations too.

This crucial data is usually fed into the system by shop floor operators, often after the event, or written on forms that are keyed in later on. It relies upon the operator’s memory - for over half a shift in this real example.

So what goes through the operator’s mind during this process? We are the only people who physically add value so should we be wasting our time filling in forms? OK, so standard set-up is one hour, and that’s about how long it took. There were a couple of 10-minute stops while I cleaned the tray, so the rest was run time, 4.6 hours.

The Continuous Improvement team can now analyse this data and work out how best to increase output and reduce costs. Pretty obvious, isn’t it? Running the machine at a higher speed will provide the most scope, and then look at set-up time.

Firm foundations for Continuous Improvement

Enter Plantnode®, a tiny, self-contained data collection system. Installed and configured very quickly - in less than a day for a simple installation - Plantnode immediately starts to deliver the true, real time picture of production performance.

Plantnode is a non-invasive, network independent device that connects directly to each major piece of equipment, regardless of age. It doesn’t rely on PLC input alone, but can read data any from kind of sensor.  It stores all real time data internally, with no interruptions except for power outage.

Now we can see what really happened. Running a Plantnode trial alongside our manual data collection process reveals what really happened.

In fact, one of the two big slugs of down-time, recorded in good faith, in retrospect, by the operator, was actuall made up of many tiny stoppages. And the set-up time wasn't dead on standard either, being just a bit longer. All this provides quite a different set of input to the Continuous Improvement team, who were struggling to find ways to make the machine run faster in any case.

Plantnode Delivers Immediate Results

Managers need Plantnode

Connect it to your network and view real time or historic reports from the comfort of your desk, even your own home, using a web browser.  With no server-side computer required, no software to install, Plantnode collects 100% accurate data from day 1, tracking Production events in real-time.

Managers at Shop, Plant, Division and Group can view the results from a dashboard in their web browser.  Plantnode comes ready with a large set of interactive reports already configured so it delivers results immediately.

See that display at the top, Chiller temperature 30.58°C? That’s what Plantnode is displaying right now, in real time. In the real Plantnode you could click on it to see all the other metrics the Plantnode is collecting - in real time.

Plantnode empowers operators

Plantnode detects whether a machine is running or not. Its overhead display shows operators the exact machine status (or anything else you want to display), even when they’re away from it.

At every stoppage, Plantnode asks for a reason code, entered by barcode. It keeps prodding, so every stoppage is described. Operators love this as they have evidence to show their diligence and why the machine stopped. Surprise, surprise... not every minute lost is the operator’s fault after all!

Plantnode’s overhead display changes colour to give an instant indication of current status and impending problems: GREEN is good, AMBER indicates a problem or threshold looming, RED is for stopped.

Plantnode Helps Engineering reduce down time

The machine stops - the operator is 5 minutes into a break.  On return he pages maintenance and they arrive as soon as they can.  The repair is quick, replace a faulty sensor, but the operator has gone to get material.  Production resumes promptly when he gets back.

The machine was down from 07:10 to 07:53 and the whole time was booked to Engineering. The repair actually took 5 minutes. No wonder Engineers like Plantnode.

Now this is what happens after Plantnode is installed. Plantnode detects the stoppage and updates the overhead display. The operator interrupts his tea break when he sees it, returns, scans the reason code and goes back to his tea break. The stoppage needs Engineering attention.

Plantnode pages Engineering immediately, with a light or bell or a message by email or SMS. The Engineer scans his bar-code on arrival, so the world can see he arrived within a couple of minutes. He can enter maintenance reason codes too, for future analysis by the Continuous Improvement team.

The overhead display shows the problem is fixed so the operator returns and restarts the machine; the materials can wait. Result: down-time 13 minutes, reduced from 44!

Find out more

Plantnode is sold in Eire and the UK by Force 9 Business Solutions Ltd.  Please leave your name and contact details on the form at the top of this page and we'll contact you as soon as we can.