For the past 100 years, the mantra of our client's industry has been "one machine, one operator." A dedicated operator is responsible for all of the configuration and monitoring tasks of the manufacturing station. The machine's productivity is directly linked to the performance of the human operator.
In both theory and observed practice, humans do not perform repetitive tasks over long periods with high levels of accuracy and speed. To meet the client's objective of maximizing throughput and minimizing costs, the inherent inefficiencies of the human must be addressed.
The obvious approach is to remove, or at least minimize, the dependency of the human operators. This is much easier said than done. The machines used by our client are typical of large manufacturing stations. The machines use a personal computer for interfacing with the human operator. Application software on the personal computer allows the operators to load, monitor, and configure the machine. Interim progress of the manufacturing activity is monitored by the operator via a display within the machines's application software.
In order to remove the dependency on the operator, the tasks performed within the application software must be automated. If the application software has the appropriate features already built in, process automation is straightforward. If those features don't exist, automation becomes must more challenging and most efforts come to a screeching halt.
One of our clients is a national leader in the printing industry. This client is very focused on high quality, low cost, and fast turnaround. They have achieved their market leadership by injecting innovation into a very mature industry. Of course, the software application used by our client does not provide the features or interfaces for process automation. Instead of conceding defeat, a solution was constructed and deployed using the WinApp Navigator product, a tool designed for process automation projects where no traditional interfaces exist. The tasks once performed by human operators are now being executed by software in an automated fashion.
The solution has been in operation with 10 printers for over 13 months in a 24/7 environment. Printers are loaded automatically with the new job information as soon as the preceding job is completed. The job information is keyed in via the solution software more quickly than is humanly possible and with 100% accuracy.
Detailed improvement metrics are proprietary but the increase in throughput exceeded the client's theoretical upper limit. The best evidence of the success is the age old policy of "one machine, one operator" is no longer followed. The new paradigm consists of a single operator assigned to oversee the operation of four printers. By bringing a new perspective and technology to an old problem, we were able to develop a very successful solution for our client.
How does one bring process automation to a software application that does not support it? Before that question is answered, let's briefly review the application automation realm. Software-based process automation can be partitioned into two broad categories, intra-application and inter-application automation. Intra-application automation deals with automating tasks within a single software application. Automation may be achieved with scripts, macros, and configuration changes within the single application. This type of automation is typically easy and inexpensive to implement.
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