Unit Traceability, Error-Proofing, and OEE Gains Across Two Plants
On a mission to make homes healthy
AprilAire has a long history of helping families improve their health and comfort by controlling their indoor air quality. Its Healthy Air System is a collection of whole-house products that together cover every aspect of indoor air quality.
AprilAire first implemented 10in6 in its Poynette, Wisconsin plant as part of a plant modernization initiative. The main goals were serialized unit traceability and simpler manufacturing execution, and the team expected efficiency to improve along the way. After Poynette, AprilAire expanded 10in6 into its Madison, Wisconsin plant.
"The line management team can now focus our improvement efforts on the biggest potential gains. We can see when and where there are issues, plus the causes."
Two plants reporting by hand
Before 10in6, both AprilAire plants tracked downtime and quality mainly on paper, and every OEE, downtime and quality report was produced manually. Each plant came to the project with its own list of goals.
Poynette
- Monitor and stabilize production pace
- Decrease downtime and increase OEE
- Provide accurate data for continuous improvement
- Serialized unit traceability — every product shipped with the correct components
Madison
- Eliminate manual data collection and duplicate entry
- Replace inaccurate, incomplete data
- Give every department access to data that took SQL skills to query in the old system
- Quickly identify training needs for new employees
"Before 10in6, it was harder to make decisions. Data was entered manually and it wasn't complete or trusted. Now we know and trust the numbers and can make decisions based on them."
10in6 modules deployed
AprilAire implemented several 10in6 modules across its projects, from production visibility to serialized traceability.
Downtime & Production Reporting
- Real-time status vs. targets to create awareness for the production team
- Trended analysis of issues to focus improvement efforts and resources
- Automated shift, daily, and weekly production reports
- Downtime and scrap data sorted by machine, part number, and shift
Traceability & Scan-to-Pack
- Staff scan all components into the box for shipping
- Confirm the right accessories are installed on each unit
- Confirm the number of bolts and torque on each unit
- Labels print only after all components are scanned and final inspection is complete
- Searchable data to determine root cause if a customer's unit fails
Andon Calls & Issues Tracker
- Operators call for help with auto-formatted email/text to the right department
- Call, response, and resolution times tracked
- Long-term issues and resolutions tracked in a knowledge repository
- Improved response times from Maintenance, Engineering, and Production support
Real-Time Displays & Label Printing
- Large displays with configurable "slide shows" of live production data
- HR announcements, quality and safety notifications, one-point lessons
- Simplified label printing with 10in6's flexibility vs. the AS/400 ERP
- Reduced label printing costs
"We use 10in6 to monitor critical quality characteristics and to ensure every unit has the required accessories. This is done down to confirming the right number of bolts are torqued to the right force before we allow the product to get the final box label."
Results at Poynette and Madison
Poynette
- OEE improved from 43% to 60% in the first 3 months
- Dehumidifier department OEE improved an additional 10% in the last year
- Downtime as a percent of total hours cut by two-thirds in that area
- OEEs stabilized and became less variable across lines
- Reduced training time for new operators with scan-to-pack
- Simpler, faster recipe management
- Tightened unit-testing tolerances through SPC data
Madison
- Payroll and Engineering each save 2–3 hours per week in admin time
- Easy to identify training needs and set operators up for success
- Operators spend less time categorizing downtime
- Every department can pull the data without SQL skills
"It used to take 30 minutes a day to gather and analyse data for our morning LMT meeting. Now it takes 2 minutes each day to know which lines to focus on and investigate the issues."
"The uptime of this system has been 100%. The service we receive from [our 10in6 project manager] is simply the best. He completes projects and updates on time, is always responsive when we have questions, and provides insights that only somebody who has seen many implementations could provide."
"When we started using 10in6, OEE improved without any specific fixes — just putting the numbers out in front of operators enabled them to know where they were versus the production target."
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