It’s no secret here that we love working with CIMCO Manufacturing Data Management (MDM). Over the last eight years or so, more and more of our customers have found data management to be an essential tool. Some with our nudging and many on their own recognizing how it resolves some significant bottlenecks.
After a recent conversation with an IT manager at a prospect it became evident that we needed more content to help them carry conversations further in their organizations. While they understand the problems their organizations face, often it is challenging to get consensus on which issues to tackle first. What better way to learn, for those who are not yet familiar, than to describe symptoms that might indicate you have a lack of data management problem. We wrote this for these brave individuals ready to carry the banner for data management to the next kaizen event or production meeting.
While Managed Solutions and CIMCO provide solutions that can be used in a variety of environments, data management is usually more specific. Data management is particularly valuable for advanced manufacturers and shops that utilize CNC equipment. It is important to note that these are the audience MDM was designed to help. However, the tool is incredibly flexible and really can be used anywhere there is a need for managing data. But….
Can’t we just use windows?
The reason that it is so difficult to effectively manage manufacturing data has to do with both environmental issues (Windows File System, Permissions, User and Group Security) and capabilities, or really, a lack of them, in existing products and platforms. Many solutions on the market today rely on a “flat” world, where they anticipate the customer to use all of their products and no others, and precisely the way they recommend them.
CIMCO designs their products with the most flexibility in the market. This is particularly true of MDM. You can’t get too far in this industry without tools that easily connect to your existing systems and offer powerful solutions for data collection, data management, and secure program delivery.
What symptoms have some of our customers have used MDM to solve?
You may need data management if…
- You regularly re-work or scrap parts due to incorrect revisions, programs or processes being used.
- Your employees spend a lot of time doing redundant or repetitive tasks.
- You want to shift from paper to electronic documents.
- You are losing quality improvements made on the shop floor to your CNC programs due to cumbersome processes or lack of a way to quickly review and approve changes.
- Storing documents of any kind is not easy, fast and controlled.
- You are unable to quickly add new photos to your setup documents.
- You don’t have a complete history and backup of all changes made to your CNC programs and related documents.
- You struggle to maintain consistent file formatting and naming conventions.
- File system permissions and folder layout limitations prevent you from really using your data by linking common documents, special permissions and access modes.
- Your workflows and notifications/sign off procedures are manual/cumbersome.
- Information security practices such as limiting access to data based on need to know and mission critical access rules are next to impossible to implement due to lack of granular security options.
Do any of these reasons strike a chord with you? If even one does, contact us to discuss how data management can be implemented at your organization.
