The Future of Manufacturing
This is one of two editorial reports about current events shaping the
Manufacturing Industry. This event took place during the month of May, 2001.
These article are about the current industrial revolution, but most of the innovations
will soon be standards in
the industry.
A visit to Chicago's Association for Facilities Engineering
Chapter:
The month of May I visited Chicago's AFE
Chapter. Attending their May 3rd Symposium,
I met a lot of great people, but it was a special pleasure meeting Michael Doyle
(Mikie) in person. It was also great to meet Joel Leonard
(VP of National Membership) in person for the first time. Mikie, as Chicago's
webmaster, has been instrumental in the creation of our great AFE-St. Louis web site. Mikie
and Joel have been a great help the the rejuvenation of our St. Louis Chapter.
 The
symposium was all day long, held at Lucent's new Lisle building. The architecture
was amazing, sporting a giant sun roof constructed in the shape of a satellite
dish. This location will house the Bell Research Labs, inventors of great toys
like the Text-to-Speech
Synthesis.
You can use it on-line for free!
Check
it out, it's fun. I want to thank Lucent for being such a great host.
Being relatively new to AFE, I was able to learn a lot about how AFE
functions are held. AFE symposiums are a great way to meet
leaders in our industry and learn about new technology. You'll find not only
local business attend these seminars, but leaders from a far. I met key members
from our Indiana Chapter, even the Chief Editor from Plant Engineering
Magazine. There was AFE members from 6 different chapters representing 4
regions, present.
So why add this meeting to our "Future of Manufacturing" series? At
AFE seminars you are presented with classes on the latest technology, crucial to
remaining competitive in today's industry. At AFE Chicago's symposium, we had
speakers from many disciplines. Starting out, Lucent spoke about the kind of
team work it took to construct such an impressive building, and keep it in budget.
A big part of this accomplishment was a result of Ragner Benson Inc.'s.
RBI started a Facility
Improvement Team division this year and spoke at the Symposium. Wise words; "Facilitating good communication and
achieving productive working relationship among all team members lie at the
heart of RBI's requirements."
 ONDEO Nalco empowered us with the information needed to improve our
operations.
SensorWatch a New Technology from ONDEO Nalco was truly amazing. Their equipment
will be the way of the future. These sensors are web based, wireless data monitoring.
They operate on battery power, transmit to a base unit that is connected to the
customer's LAN.
From there, via the Internet, the information goes to a monitoring site. The
site has several redundant servers and back up systems. Nalco personnel monitor
incoming data 24/7, and user software allows remote monitoring with custom alarm
settings. They say; "Sleep better knowing your process is being watched
24/7". This new technology addresses reliability, predictive maintenance,
and all other areas of efficient equipment operation.
 We
learned about "Value Engineering" and how we use it to our benefit? Scott
Calkins, Joel Leonard (on right in picture) of
Plumlee Associates
where very informative. Scott gave us insight on the
Reliability-Focused Asset Management process. Of particular interest to my business
was his section on performance measurements and business intelligence. He
reminded me of the importance of equipment criticality ranking, and how
manufacturing must start there before they can obtain true control over process
cost. Scott says" To focus asset management efforts on the most critical
equipment, first we must rank all equipment according to the breakdown likelihood and
consequence combination.
 Even
Grainger was there to teach us how to use their online Internet based total
MRO solution software. There where a couple items that stand out from the vast
Internet MRO search solutions, that need mentioned. One, their partnership with FindMRO.com, that not only has many online databases, but if you can't find
something, submit it to them, and they will find it for you. When asked what was
the response time, "typically, less than 24 hours", was the reply. The
other innovation was their local office working on integrating their online
billing/history database with customer's CMMS software. Now that's the future,
more power from information with less management interaction.
In the future, more and more of industry's management will
realize the necessity to belong to AFE, to keep current on the latest
technology. We learned in this one day seminar, new efficient management
techniques, all vital equipment will have wireless battery powered sensors, and
the internet will integrate most of the vast industrial information we need to remain
competitive. Through AFE we don't have to wait until the technology is standard,
we can be the leaders in our respective markets.
Would you like to know more? With AFE, you have direct contact!
Back to "The Future", please click here.
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