What is a Manual Process line?
A Manual Process Line is a type of line used whenever it's not feasible to collect data with a sensor. The manual process line is used to input downtime and downtime reason, while also making it possible to count parts manually.
On Manual process lines, the operators manually input when, why, and how long the process was stopped, as well as how many good parts were produced, or how many parts were scrapped.
Setting up a Manual Process Line
Manual Process Lines can be configured to enter downtime or manually count production. You can also enable both at the same time.
- Find your virtual device by searching for “virtual” in your Devices in Administration. If you don’t see one, contact sales to get one.
- Create a sensor on the device. Wait about 60 seconds for the sensor to be created (refresh the page). Once created, open up the sensor settings for the new sensor. Here, you can enable production counting and downtime registration.
Note: Depending on how you plan to use the manual line, you have the option to manually count production as well as logging stops. If you do not plan to manually count production, we would recommend that you turn off manual production count. By doing so, you will avoid the graph visualiser appearing as though it is offline:
- Create a new line with the new sensor as the bottleneck sensor.
- If you go to the “Register stops” tab, you should now see your new downtime registration and manual counters if both have been enabled.
Downtime Registration
There are two ways to register stops on a Manual Process line:
Begin/end stop button. You can either use the ‘Begin stop’ button to indicate that the process has stopped.
Afterwards, you will be prompted to choose a stop cause from the available options. The line will be marked as stopped, and the button will change to an ‘End stop’ button. When the process is running again, click the ‘End stop’ button to end the stop.
Insert stop button. If you want to insert a stop that happened in the past, you can use the ‘Insert stop’ button. When you click it, you’ll be shown a dialog where you can select a stop cause and enter the ‘start’ and ‘end’ times of the stop. If the stop is still ongoing, you can toggle the checkbox “ongoing”.
Automatic stop registration
You can enable automatic stop registration to register time outside shifts on your Manual Process lines, in the same way as your other lines:
Dashboards
If you are using only downtime registration on the manual process line, you can use the Batch and Shift dashboards. Support for manual counters on the dashboards is under development and coming soon.
For a line with only manual downtime registration, the dashboards show the cumulative number of minutes the line has been running. The expected count is calculated from the ‘Expected speed’ set on the Manual process line. The ‘Expected speed’ should be set to the average number of minutes you expect the line to be running each minute. For example, if you expect the line to be running 80% of the time, you’d set it to 0.8.
You can update the ‘Expected speed’ under ‘Main Sensor settings’ for the sensor.
Manual Production Counting
With a manual production counter, you can count good parts or scrap manually using a tablet or computer. The image below shows an example of a Manual Process Line with a good parts and scrap counter attached.
Configuration Options
Manual production counters are modular, meaning multiple counters can be set up on a line.
Counting good parts
The green counter represents the bottleneck sensor, counting the Produced amount on the line.
Scrap counters
If an additional virtual sensor is added as a scrap sensor in the line configuration, it will show up as a scrap counter. Below is an example of multiple scrap sensors being added to a Manual Process Line.
Scrap reasons
It is possible to use the scrap counter to count scrap reasons. When a counting button is pressed, the operator will be prompted to choose which reason (see image below).
In “Analytics” you can select the “Scrap Reasons” chart to view the distribution of scrap reasons:
How to set primary quantity
The primary counting quantity (+1) can be changed depending on the needs of the workstation. This is done by clicking the setting icon on the counter itself
Local Counter Field
When you add a count, it can take up to 30 seconds before it’s visible any other place in the system (e.g. the LIVE tab or the batch tab). This is due to the feature running on the same data pipeline as the rest of our system. This delay will be disappear mid 2024 after a planned update to the system. To provide operators with a more user friendly experience, we have made the counter field (see highlighted on the image below) a local value, meaning that it will show the value changing immediately on the operators screen. This way, the operator gets real-time feedback on how much has been counted, but the database will only have the value up to 30 seconds later.
The local counter field currently does not show the amount counted within the selected timeframe (as the other KPIs in the system does). It only shows the amount counted since the counter was locally reset. That means that when you reset the counter, the value shown is visually and locally set to 0. This does not delete any data in the database, but is a way for operators to know how much they have produced since the beginning of a shift or batch.
How to undo and edit counts
Press the “EDIT INPUT” button to see previously submitted counts. In the dialog, you can change or delete counts. Please note that it may take up to 30 seconds before new data is shown.