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Paperless reporting on shop floor


Metallic
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Hey all,

I am considering moving to a paperless reporting system for our shop floor. I have zero experience with this, however. My main thought would be to use an iPad (or several) on the shop floor where I can then Push my setup sheets, tool lists, and reports out to operators, or for myself for convenience.

Does ActiveReports or VarcoReports or X+ support this functionality? Or is this more suited for ERP software?

Have any of you successfully implemented such a shift?

 

Thank you.

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We are trying to do the same in the shop I work in. Tricky though. lots of elements to consider. If you are successful with this it would be great if you shared some details and some things to be aware of. The biggest problem I see is that you will need a large tablet. The larger the tablet the more expensive it is. Zooming in is a problem as it's much better to view  the whole page. plus you can only see one page at a time. Viewing only one page sucks and after you scroll down 5 pages you may want to back up a few pages....in a nutshell the navigation will suck. It's not the same as paper. Then what happens when your operator wants to scribble a note on the set-up sheet or make adjustments to the the set-up sheet? 

Things become trickier with tablets. To solve alot of the problems I mentioned above you would need a windows based tablet (or apple based) and those are double the price if not triple. That way you can use software like adobe to allow the operator to mark-up the set-up sheets. Now you need to protect the files  you share from sabotage....Hmmmm. Tricky.

We put this idea on pause because we ran into these slight issues with no efficient solution. 

If you become successful with the implementation of tablets as a replacement for set-up sheets and drawings......Let me know how you did it.

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We are also exploring  how to do it. The pdf format  could add notes that are typed for cleaner  set up sheets.  Varco is making us have a better look at it. A bit more info  on the setup  sheet could be good  instead of  printing out 4-6 sheets or more with large jobs . If you could display one page at a time and just flip or click through  them it would be easier.  We want to also try to get to the point of using high QA so  we could have live results that either the operator enters or cmm . Live without having to try to find the traveller. 

It would be great to have No traveller. I'm sure in a few months we will have collaborative  ideas to make it an easier transition.

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We are looking to do this as well...in the immediate future. Our IT department is currently installing touch monitors that can withstand the dirt and grime of the shop floor at each work station. And then we will dump all of our paperwork onto the network where our operators can access them WITHOUT having access to our original files. We use a combination of Varco reports for our tool build sheets, Excel for the description of our toolpaths and powerpoint for our setup instructions. We also plan to give them screen shots of the toolpaths or we may create .exe files since verify and simulate both support that...

That's the general direction our managers plan to move...but we'll see how it actually plays out in the next month or two...

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A company I used to work for had implemented something like this for their shop , https://www.google.com/search?q=mr+narrative&rlz=1C1CHBF_enCA774CA790&oq=Mrnarr&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l3.6847j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8. using Ipads.

It worked pretty well provided it was used properly. It worked with a book, chapter and page system.

The book being the part/part#, Chapters being machine/tool setup, Quality issues and alerts, assembly instructions etc. the pages would then be the different tools with relevant info. Whenever someone added a page to a chapter such as a quality alert it would go live straight away.

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M4573RMZD

as we are in a University setting, security is not a huge priority, while we do a lot of work with researchers at our labs, our network is pretty impervious to issues. We have campus wide security protocols, and within our department is a robust IT team with a secure server/network. Pushing setup sheets and code is not a huge concern for us, and no ITAR or anything.
 
PDF format would be ideal as then markups could be possible, the back and forth between operator and programmer much more streamlined.
 
I will look into Invaware.
 
Hope someone has done this...NYCCNC posted a video of a shop tour at 3DTechDraw in Europe and they had implemented paperless everything
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A shop we have done a lot of work for in the past, is pushing 100% CAD driven, electronic data and a paperless workflow.

They use Siemens software... we have JT2Go, a free viewer, to look at their parts for estimating and supposedly, shop floor viewing... it is set up as a CAD style viewer so the operator can rotate the part around and click on details to see dimensions. The operators hate this format... they can't look over and spot a dimension on a paper drawing... they literally have to stop what they're doing, walk over to a computer, and start clicking around to get the information they need to proceed.

All the typical problems are there... crashes and glitches... clicking on the wrong thing and clicking back or exit... dirty, grimy computer devices from being on the shop floor... it just hasn't gone well... it's been a painful process.

The company refuses to provide standard drawings with views and cross-sections, on PDF's or some other simple way to convey part information.

It was a tough decision, but we stopped quoting their jobs for about 3 months... I think other places have as well.

Well, now they are asking us to start quoting again and offering to send PDF's too... I think they finally understand… while it is easier for them... it is far too difficult for the rest of the manufacturing processes down the line.

I think it is still a bit too early to make a push for all electronic data in manufacturing.

Computers in general, and especially CAD systems, are still mystical devices to a lot of people.

It's hard to beat a good old blueprint spread across a bench next to your machine.

I see set up sheets in the same way.

A good one or two page set up sheet, with a few arrows sketched in showing where zero is, and a few hand written notes... well, call me old school, but I'm sticking with that. 

Sometimes simple is better.

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Everything is difficult  to start with but we discover problems  and find solutions.

Before vending machines there were drawers  full of stock that needs to be managed and sometimes  isn't.

Before cadcam like it is today  there was cnc hand written.

Before dynamic milling we were all doing plunge and plow cutting with a lot less reliable toolpaths

Someone will be the pioneer.. 

 

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