|
Using Mobile Wireless Technology in Manufacturing
In the wireless world, are there “mobile workers” or is there simply “wireless work?” Whatever the right term, radios are opening new vistas, but still take tried-and-true implementation skills—including the key one, involve everyone.
Mobile workers can use wireless connectivity, no doubt about that. But “mobile worker” takes on dozens of meanings, from road warriors armed with Wi-Fi-enabled laptops and USB cell phone plug-ins, to back-lot roamers with pickups and two-way radios.
“There's no such thing as a fixed shift, at least for knowledge workers,” says Cliff Whitehead, manager, strategic applications for vendor Rockwell Automation Inc., Milwaukee. “People work around the clock, responding to voice or data or e-mail coming across a variety of devices from iPhones to Blackberries to laptops to you-name-it.”
In much of the industrial world, where there are fewer knowledge workers and more hands-on personnel, there appears to be only a limited number of truly mobile workers. Functions include engineering (including controls) and maintenance, with a smattering of people involved in processes that require equipment across large areas...
Read more
Converting Manufacturing Logsheets to Wireless Pays Dividends -
Cytec Industries Fortier Complex has put its daily logsheets on the radio in a smoothly-orchestrated, staged rollout.
“It's all pretty simple,” says Dave Stevenson, process automation and control, Cytec Industries Fortier Complex, Weswego, La. “We just converted paper logsheets to electronic ones.”
On the surface, it might have been a simple switch in medium—replacing dead trees with 1s and 0s sent on a wireless network from handhelds—but the replacement process had some interesting twists and turns. The Fortier plant makes melamine, acrylonitrile and other building blocks that go into plastics resins and end-products for a broad range of uses from automotive headlights to soil additives. The manufacturing processes are complex and require more than their fair share of oversight and monitoring...Read more
|
