Fire-Fighting versus Managing

November 9, 2019By Rod HeckmanFollow Our Blog, Operations Management

A recent article in Industry Week highlights a prominent problem: Fire-Fighting: “Front line supervisors play a critical role in the performance of an organization. They are the interface between workers and management; the vast majority of people in any organization directly report to them. As such they are the single biggest influence on employee motivation … Read More

Case Study: Using Sensors for Accurate Cost Allocation

November 9, 2019By Rod HeckmanFollow Our Blog

CHALLENGE:  A global farm equipment manufacturer allocates energy expense to its operating units, and the “owners” of those cost centers are tasked with managing/reducing those costs.  The problem is that the “owners” don’t have the information they need to accomplish their task. SOLUTION:  We designed a pilot installation in one manufacturing center.  With real-time, continuous … Read More

The Best Energy Monitoring System Just Got Better

November 9, 2019By Rod HeckmanFollow Our Blog

For the past 18 months, SiteWatch has been revolutionizing the Industrial IoT with simple, affordable energy sensors and intuitive analytics delivered in a variety of energy units:  amps, volts, kilowatts, kilowatt hours, energy cost and power factor. PULSE DATA Now, we are pleased to announce that SiteWatch can also acquire pulse signals from non-power meters … Read More

THE DEATH OF LOGGING DEVICES

October 14, 2019By Rod HeckmanFollow Our Blog, Operations Management

All across America, thousands of technicians, armed with clipboards and tablets, manually monitor manufacturing process and equipment health.  The mission is critical, but the method is outdated. In contrast, SiteWatch IoT allows you to monitor ALL your assets in ALL your facilities from your desktop or phone. Our new technology – featuring snap-on, wireless, self-powered … Read More

HOW A LEADING LEAD MANUFACTURER USES SITEWATCH TO TRAIN SKILLED MACHINE OPERATORS

October 14, 2019By Rod HeckmanFollow Our Blog, Operations Management

As the American workforce ages and retires, many of our clients report difficulty in training and managing their new replacements.  One of our clients, a manufacturer of lead products, uses SiteWatch as a solution. Brian H, the Manager at their PA facility, reports that SiteWatch assists with both training and supervision… “Our manufacturing operations are … Read More

6 Mundane Maintenance Tasks to Automate with Continuous Energy Monitoring

September 26, 2019By Rod HeckmanFollow Our Blog

Whether you are a reliability professional, maintenance technician, or operations manager, you are keenly aware of the purpose and utility of routine equipment inspections.  This is a time-proven method for verifying machine health and preventing catastrophic machine failures. Emissions & environmental reporting may also be mandated in your industry by authorities such as the EPA … Read More

The IoT Solution That Pays for Itself

September 11, 2019By Rod HeckmanFollow Our Blog

If you use more than 3M kWh of electricity per year, and you are paying around 7 cents per kWh (including distribution and supply), Site Watch will pay for itself every year by identifying just 5% in energy savings.  And according to the Department of Energy, 5% is the LEAST you can expect… The Savings … Read More

Using SiteWatch for Operations Management

September 11, 2019By Rod HeckmanFollow Our Blog

We are consulting with a regional food processor that packs over 3 million bushels of apples per year.  They are passionate about their mission – healthy snacking – and they are committed to continuous improvement. Their production process has three significant costs: ·     Produce (apples) ·     Labor ·     Electricity The company runs two production lines and packages 5-10 … Read More

The Best Energy Monitoring Solution Just Got Better

September 11, 2019By Rod HeckmanFollow Our Blog

We are pleased to announce that SiteWatch can now communicate directly with your legacy production monitoring and control system using Modbus TCP. Each of our patented bridges acts as a Modbus server for up to 32 sensors. PLUS, SiteWatch can now read pulse data from electric, gas and water meters. Data is near real time: … Read More