One of the newest Blackbird customers is producing various construction parts in metal. The customer was using a system to measure their Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) on some of their production lines, but they wanted a better system, as the OEE data was not reliable. They also wanted to implement it on all their lines to analyze the whole factory’s efficiency. This is how they started trying the Blackbird solution to get trustworthy OEE data from one of their machines.
Before introducing the Factbird, the customer had been looking for an OEE solution, but they were often too expensive or too complicated to get started. In addition, the company already had an ERP system and the OEE system should be linked to the schedule data in the ERP system, which could also require a time-consuming integration process.
As the customer found that the Blackbird solution is a non-invasive product, meaning it does not have any impact on the existing system, it was very easy for them to decide to try the Factbird. The installation was done by the customer - easy and fast. The production counts got visualized on the Blackbird App immediately – without any hassle. The customer started to use stop cause registration, hence OEE can be visualized in real time and can be monitored from anywhere on smartphones, tablets and PCs - and also on a big flat screen on the plant floor.
After a while, the customer asked us how to get the schedule data from the ERP system to save the time that the operators uses to type it in manually as well as to avoid incorrectness caused by manual input. The Blackbird system offers a few ways to integrate to the ERP system, which was not as complicated as the customer feared and the IT department was impressed how easy it was to integrate and how powerful the Blackbird system’s capability is. They did not have to change the existing ERP setup, no consulting fees from the ERP supplier and no need for additional support agreements.
Now the customer is considering using the Blackbird OEE system on all their lines as well as in their other plants, who have heard about the Blackbird solution and got interested in trying the system.
First try the OEE system, confirm the value of what Blackbird can provide, then officially roll it out in your factory. The good thing about Blackbird is, you can just try without modifying or changing your existing setup and you can start using only what you need. You can expand the usage of the data for further intelligent analysis whenever you want in the future.
The Blackbird system is a cloud application, which gets smarter all the time, as it is constantly updated with relevant functions requested by the customers, not like a software installed local with frozen functionality.
You will never grow out of the Blackbird system because it can grow with you!