8 Reasons for Factory-Wide Amper Adoption

By: Michael Yep, Customer Success Engineer

When first deploying Amper, many customers understandably want to test the solution out on a smaller scale. You may only have Amper installed on a few machines, but have more assets that have yet to be connected.

If you want unified data, it may be time to consider connecting the rest of your machines. But you may be asking yourself, “is it really worth my time?”

In this article, we’ll dive into reasons why factory-wide Amper adoption is worth it—creating value by consolidating and streamlining your operations moving forward.

8 Benefits of Factory-Wide Adoption

1. Create Culture Change

Culture change is hard. Any change is hard. Kudos to you, if you’ve already started the digital transformation journey with Amper—give yourself a pat on the back. You’re taking the right steps.

However, if Amper isn’t deployed across the entire factory, we see customers run into common complaints from operators like: “Doing tasks like labeling downtime on certain machines but not others is confusing!” Or “Why do I need to sign in and label downtime on machine A but not on machine B?” or the obvious: “I just don’t want to.”

You, the change manager, know the positive impact of downtime labeling and adoption of the system by your operators. But do your operators know?

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If you have only some machines connected to Amper and some not connected, there is a potential of inadvertently communicating to your operators that they can always go back to the old way of doing things. And you definitely don’t want this mindset when implementing change!

By connecting every machine on your shop floor to Amper, you are expressing your confidence in the change— and can start implementing positive reinforcement to encourage your operators to adopt the system.

2. Improve Operator Productivity and Performance

Without Amper on all your machines, it is difficult to accurately judge operator productivity and performance.

With Amper deployed factory-wide, you’re able to determine operator efficiency, areas of improvement/support needed, and gauge overall productivity and performance of your workforce.
You can also easily judge operator performance with Operator Sign-In and Tally Sheets, giving you visibility into where you may need additional training, or where you can implement positive reinforcement to reward best practices.

See for more information!

It is difficult to gather a full picture of your employees’ performance without Amper on all of your machines and takes a significant effort and time to manually collect data for projects like 👨‍🏭Improve Paid Labor Utilization. Even then, the data you collect will not be in real-time and will contain inherent inaccuracies.

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By tracking OEE factory-wide, you can visualize the full potential of your workforce and create systems/schedules that equip your operators for success.

With Amper on all of your machines, you save time and money while increasing accuracy in factory-wide data collection.

3. Increase Job Productivity and Performance

Similar to gaining an understanding of operator productivity and performance, you want to be able to judge your job performance effectively.

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In order to accurately see your job by job efficiency and improve your costing, you need to see how well the job is performed during each operation. You can't do that unless you're measuring all operations.

As specified in the aforementioned Operator Productivity and Performance section, the work on each machine varies. If you’d like to do continuous improvement on the processes, it is most beneficial to have an understanding of all your machines—this way you can have confidence that you are driving the right projects in the right areas!

4. Make More Informed CapEx Decisions

Big decisions require good reasons—especially if those decisions involve big money. When considering the ROI on CapEx decisions, you won’t have the entire picture if you only have data from a fraction of your machines.

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If you have Amper on every machine, you’re able to consider all of your data, factory-wide, which is more conducive to providing quality justifications for CapEx decisions. You’ll easily be able to answer the “why” questions, and have the data necessary to support you in your decisions.

When decisions have real numbers behind them, there is more confidence in the justification of the investment: the money, the time, and the work to follow. Complete data also provides the ability to track progress and positive change from these CapEx decisions.

5. Achieve True Root Cause Analysis

Root cause analysis of any problem is only as good as the quality and quantity of data. Consider this scenario:

Let’s say you have 3 machines total, but Amper is only on Machines 1 and Machine 2. Your biggest bottleneck is on Machine 1, and you used the data to fix the problem. Great! However, if you work in manufacturing, you know the bottleneck surely went somewhere else.
So, let’s say your bottleneck moved from Machine 1 to Machine 3. In this scenario, you’d feel the effects, but it would be very hard to identify “why” if Machine 3 wasn’t connected to Amper.
With Amper deployed on all machines, you would be able to identify much faster if and where your bottleneck moved, and thus be able to re-prioritize your efforts in a timely manner.

This is a specific case scenario, but the reasoning applies for any problem that might be hiding in the complexity of your operations.

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Having a complete understanding of your operations across the entire plant will allow you to quickly identify issues and make improvements with more confidence.

The root cause analysis of any problem is only as good as the quality and quantity of the data. By considering all variables, you can approach problem solving with a wider lens—enabling you to find the true root cause and implement an appropriate/effective solution.

6. Enhance Communication and Overall Visibility

Communication is key. In practice, standard procedures and processes are what help establish open and sustainable communication on the shop floor.

With all machines and cells on Amper, communication functions like Call Teams/Alerts/Maintenance are understood by everyone in the facility. Having a standardized communication system creates a conducive environment for productive work.

Review the Alerts areas in teh 💻Learn the App article to see how to implement these!

The same goes for visibility. When every machine is displayed on your Scoreboards , this increases not only the communication across your entire plant - but visibility of all machines. Visibility = high awareness. This awareness allows you to be proactive in preventing problems from occurring, and reactive in solving them quickly.

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When communication tools are used and understood by all, you don’t have to spend time talking about how you talk. Efficient communication breeds collective problem solving and innovation, further establishing a overarching culture of Continuous Improvement.

Unified communication and visibility also allow you to showcase your successes and progress! Continuous improvement is a journey, so being able to celebrate progress as a team provides the fuel needed to keep going.

7. Reinforce Reputability

Many of these points have a common theme—confidence. Factory-wide Amper adoption creates confidence in your own operations, and that carries undeniable value. However, what would happen if your customers had the same level of confidence in your ability to deliver as you do?

In successful businesses, confidence in operations and product is reflected not only internally—but is fundamental to a business’s external reputation.

For example, with factory-wide insight, sales and customer service reps can assure a customer that their product is in production by providing the data to prove it, which is difficult to accomplish without total visibility.

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By accomplishing factory-wide Amper adoption, the complete knowledge of your factory productivity can fuel sales. You’ll be able to increase customer confidence in your products and operations. This kind of reputation is a recipe for both continued and new business.

At the end of the day, you’re manufacturing products for your customers. What better way to increase customer confidence in your operations than by being able to say you are actively tracking OEE on all of your machines?

8. Standardize Operations

We’ve gone over 7 benefits of factory-wide Amper adoption so far. At the core of each of these reasons is one of the most important processes in manufacturing: Standardization.

When it comes to manufacturing, you know how important standardization is. You strive for it. It allows you to more effectively conduct root cause analysis and take the steps needed for continuous improvement.

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Standardization not only saves time and streamlines processes, but it creates a common language that increases communication and unifies decision making. With Amper deployed across your entire factory, you are implementing a unified system that helps standardize your operations.

At Amper, we take pride in creating just that: the standard system that empowers you with simple tools to quickly gain control of your business and unleash your true manufacturing potential.

Conclusion

We hope you now understand the potential benefits of complete Amper adoption. As with any destination, no matter how far, it is important to take the first step. If you have any further questions about how you can start factory-wide Amper adoption, please reach out to your Customer Success Engineer.