Using Data to boost Investment Returns On Machinery

As a manufacturer, you’re faced with the need to buy certain machinery to not just produce, but also test your products. However, specialist equipment comes at a cost, and as a responsible manufacturer, you’ll already be looking at ways to get the most from that investment. In this article we explore how data you already generate can help boost the ROI of your machinery.

Data-Driven Payback

At WATS, we understand the importance of machinery in production processes. It almost goes without saying, but if you don’t have the testing equipment necessary to make sure you’re hitting the quality levels you need, you’re not going to get very far.

Uptime and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)

At WATS, we recognize the critical role of machinery in production processes. Without the necessary testing equipment to ensure quality, your operations can’t succeed. Given the high costs of testers and production equipment, maintaining near 100% uptime is a priority for manufacturers.

What’s interesting, though, is that uptime itself is just a single measure of machine productivity.

If we take Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)  as a more telling measurement, we’d compare the speed of output, availability of output, and quality of output. That last one, quality of output, is particularly important because it doesn’t matter if you’ve got 100% speed and availability if what you’re producing isn’t hitting your First Pass Yield targets.

Use data to boost the quality aspect of your OEE

The only way to improve your First Pass Yield is to identify the root causes of issues; and the only way to do that is to effectively manage your testing data, and organize and access it in such a way that it delivers the insight you need to find a solution.

If you have real-time access to the data you’re producing and analyze it faster and more efficiently you can improve First Pass Yield and boost the quality aspect of your Overall Equipment Effectiveness. In turn, if the quality improves, you’ll have less retesting and reproducing, which will also improve availability.

How to use WATS to increase ROI on machinery

WATS is a test data management platform specifically designed for the needs for testing in electronics manufacturing companies. If you’re already a user of WATS you know just how powerful the tool is to get full control and overview of your  manufacturing test data from anywhere in the world, real-time.

1. Analyze Performance Metrics with Process Heatmap

WATS helps you identify trends across millions of data points so that you can then dig deeper into your testing and production data. One of the best places to start is using the Process Heatmap. This feature is a central place for starting root cause analysis, offering an intuitive and efficient way to manage your manufacturing test data

2. Automated Root Cause Analysis

WATS has several features and tools which are powered by WATS Alvea, our AI-technology. WATS users get suggestions on how to look for potential of increasing First Pass Yield. WATS Alvea surfaces insights directly and gives users insights that are difficult and time-consuming to find. Even if you’re an experienced test engineer, this saves a lot of time.

3. Streamline Data Collection and share real-time data

Eliminate the manual effort involved in gathering data across all your machines, test stations, and manufacturing sites. With WATS, you can automate test data collection and bring it all into a single, secure place. With highly granulated data and real-time access you can easily share the necessary data across your organization and do root cause analysis faster.

Those three features barely scratch the surface of everything that WATS can do. But, for manufacturers looking to get more for their money, it makes sense to use the data they’re already capturing to boost machinery ROI. 

You might also want to read: Improve Performance with OEE Monitoring