Posted March 30, 2016

 

ALPHARETTA, Ga. – Shopfloor Support LLC, an innovator in wireless shop floor control (SFC) solutions, announced that Tullahoma Industries (TII) has successfully completed implementation of its advanced Shopfloor Eye™ data collection and real-time production control solution in its Puerto Rico manufacturing operations.

 

The producer of military uniforms, thermal underwear and protective apparel reports that deployment of the system across two of its manufacturing plants, a centralized cutting facility and its Tennessee headquarters has led to a 5 percent increase in productivity, improved production line supervision, and overall process visibility and control.

    

“Almost immediately, Shopfloor Support gave us a measurable improvement in individual and plant productivity,” said TII CEO Richard Davenport. “In addition to eliminating traditional bundle tickets and gum sheets, the system provides production workers with real-time feedback that helps them monitor and pace themselves to reach higher productivity and incentive earnings. Plant managers and supervisors have gained better control over production bottlenecks, quality issues and time and attendance issues. At the corporate level, it enables us to monitor results at multiple locations and the movement of goods from cutting through production, finishing and packing.”

 

“While we have been interested in shop floor control systems for years, we did not find them accessible due to the disruptive installation requirements and cost of operation,” he continued. “When Shopfloor Support came along with their wireless, tablet-based system, we found a solution that our teams found easy to use and maintain. We are continuing to deploy it across all our operations.”

 

Shopfloor Eye represents a breakthrough in shop floor control by replacing traditional wired networking and proprietary terminals with Wi-Fi and standard Android™-based tablets to collect and report on production events immediately as they occur. In contrast to the traditional two-line display terminals that require workers to enter cryptic key codes on a numeric keypad, this next-generation SFC solution provides a full, interactive graphic display that operates with a tap or a swipe. In addition to production data, these tablets also display visual assembly instructions and enable workers to alert to any issue.