Shopfloor-Online MES drives plant performance improvements at leading automotive supplier

"The buy-in from operators and managers has been quick and enthusiastic as they experience the positive effect that accurate and available data delivers."
Philippe Révolte, Group Machining Manager, Le Bélier

Challenges

Between 2006 and 2008, Le Bélier completed a major industrial restructuring to transfer its machining activities to a plant in Hungary. During the relocation, the company made the decision to implement Shopfloor-Online MES to achieve two goals: enable an increase in production and improve the plant's response to Client Quality demands. The plant currently runs 24/7.

Shopfloor-Online^TM MOM Software

Quality Management: over 100,000 quality checks / year

Quality control limits are set in the MES and quality checks data is entered manually by operators as well as collected automatically from the CMMs. Using SPC, Le Bélier is able to detect trending and operators are alerted of out of specification measurements. Non-conformities are tracked.

Production Monitoring and Performance Analysis

Initially operators manually recorded machine stoppages, durations, reasons, throughput and scrap for each machine. In 2012, the data collection was automated (from the PLCs) to supervise over 100 machines.

The introduction of real-time production data provided improved efficiency, traceability and customer satisfaction.

Reports can be automatically generated showing:

output performance
quality yield
availability
OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness)

Key Benefits

Savings: 300 man-minutes / day; over 300,000 printed pages / year and storage cost
TCO: the MES software from Lighthouse Systems replaces an array of legacy applications, running on 20+ workstations
NPI: 20 NPI were smoothly managed in the following 3 years, putting the business in a much stronger position to respond to renewed customer demand
Managers can determine capability for any given product on a specific machine and period of time
Visibility: managers, both on and off site (via VPN), have quick access to accurate throughput, quality yield and OEE information
Le Bélier cananalyse inefficiencies quickly to introduce continuous improvement initiatives

About Le Bélier

Le Bélier is the world-leader in production of aluminium safety components for the automotive industry. With facilities located in France, Hungary, Mexico, Italy, China and Serbia, the company produces parts for major manufacturers and automotive suppliers around the world including BMW, Daimler, Renault Nissan, Volkswagen, Bosch, Delphi and Valeo.