Building Material

Junckers is Europe’s leading manufacturer of solid wood flooring for the sports, residential and commercial segments. Junckers is represented in more than 30 countries and its products are used in more than 45 countries worldwide.

Junckers has been using Factbird in a smart way that evolved with their needs.

In their factory, there are some very long manufacturing lines for wood panels and they started adding a Factbird to an existing line to get the typical data, such as

• How many items were produced
• Production time
• Stop time

Junckers installed a Factbird with a little bit of help from Blackbird on which sensor should be used, and within few minutes, they had live manufacturing data from the line - on iPad and smartphone. The installation was quick because the data from the line goes straight to the Blackbird cloud server without having to go through all the automation layers.

A few weeks later, they realised that they also wanted the reason for stops along the line in addition to recording the stop times. The Factbird was simply enhanced with wireless Check-in push buttons along the very long line (called “South” and “North”) and the operators would push the local button for every stop on that place.

This worked well because the buttons were labeled as common causes and a press of a button automatically categorises the cause on the Blackbird system. Again, they could add Check-in very quickly without any wiring because the system is running wirelessly through mobile network and LoRa network, which is independent from existing Junckers’ intranet.

Now the stop causes are recorded as

• Robot stop
• North stop
• Panel break
• Changeover
• Planned stop
• Maintenance
• Test
• Lunch
• Separator unit (North/South)
• C3 Filter
• Machine adjustment
• South Feeder 300
• South Feeder 700
• South Carousel
• South dropout

From the day the first Factbird was installed, the Factbird has evolved into a very big source of information that helps to improve the business by eliminating the most important stop causes.

In addition, it is all done wirelessly. No strings, no wiring, no cabling. Just hook the Check-in push buttons on each position and you have the live data, ready to track the main stop causes and improve the operation.

Check-in buttons are driven by batteries. But what if the battery fails after several months? Not to worry! The Blackbird gives a warning if a push button needs a new battery. In due time to shift!