WATERFORD, Mich., February 20, 2013 – Kors Engineering, a premier service provider for manufacturing and industrial organizations, today announced continued growth in diverse markets by helping manufacturers automate transactions with plant floor machine integration.

Kors focused on expanding its customer base in 2012 and now have customers in the diverse industries of metalforming, hide-processing, food packaging, chrome plating, forging and driveline systems production facilities.

There are a total of 43 plants leveraging Kors’ PleXML tool to integrate programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and other plant floor systems in order to automate processes and capture and share production data. More than 1300 work centers are integrated through Kors’ PleXML tool, with 30 percent located outside of the United States.

With nearly 300 million transactions automated to date, Kors estimates that PleXML customers have saved almost 250,000 hours with more than six million dollars saved.

“I’m proud to share that PleXML is enabling over 600,000 automated transactions on a daily basis, improving production output and quality and helping manufacturers successfully compete in a challenging marketplace,” said Tony Kaczmarek, president of Kors Engineering. “Manufacturers quickly grasp the advantages that PLC and plant floor integration brings to the enterprise. It automatically captures accurate data and frees workers from conducting repetitive tasks, allowing then to focus on higher value production activities.”

Kors Engineering also provides facility and industrial controls solutions, as well as optimizing energy management to ensure an efficient use of resources for major OEMs and suppliers. Kors Engineering’s mission is to provide services that create customer value through greater operator and equipment efficiency.

The first challenge is typically getting a communication network in place that can talk to each of the necessary machines. In most facilities multiple control vendors are used, meaning multiple brands and types of machine controllers. Even if one control vendor is used, there are almost always different families, models and sizes of the controllers in place. In an ideal world, all of the controllers would have a simple Ethernet interface and an open protocol with readily available, low cost (?even free?) communication drivers for integrating with PCs. In the real world, machines are generally islands within a facility with no connection to the rest of the site. The good news for this challenge is that most vendors newer products are far more open and networkable than those produced in the past. There are also innumerable companies out there producing bridge type products and drivers to connect older equipment to newer networks. So, we’ll assume that with a reasonable investment it is possible to connect the machines to the rest of your facility physically.

The next challenge is to actually get access to the information needed within each piece of equipment. To do so, you must have driver software on the PC network to poll the PLCs and make their data points accessible. Today, the most common driver technology used to allow PCs to access PLCs is OPC. This is a DCOM based standard that is supported by almost all plant floor integration software. Again, here the good news is there are dozens of major companies out there that create these drivers and they are reasonable inexpensive.

So now you can talk to your equipment – what do you ask for? It is reasonable to assume that the information you need in your upper level management system is not the same information the machine needs to perform it’s assigned task. Therefore, the chance that what you are trying to get out of the machine currently exists in the machine is slim. The difficulty here lies in the fact that the machines are probably all different in how they are programmed. Do you have software to be able to modify the PLCs to add the data your system requires? Do you have the expertise to make changes to the logic in-house? Does the PLC have spare processing and memory capacity to add the logic and fields necessary? Will you have to add inputs and outputs to the system to collect additional information? Here the answer might not be so easy and an engineering study would probably be best.

OK, the last challenge is to extract this newly created data from your machine via your newly implemented control network and make it useful to your business system. Here’s where the existing Internet technologies come into play. Most higher-level business systems today provide a way to integrate external systems using some sort of standard networking technology, such as HTML, XML, SOAP or Web Services. So, we have now arrived at the gap. What tools are available to take data collected from the factory floor and present that data using a standard Internet format – preferable without writing a lot of custom code?

A Toolset to Bridge the Gap

You’re here, so you have probably already Googled some combination of PLC, XML, integration, HTML, etc. I have too. The first exciting thing you will find is the OPC XML standard – it was a great idea that never really came to fruition and there are very few vendors supporting it. Next you will find a handful of questions and a few answers on various blogs, but no real answer. We were in the same situation when we were asked to create a web based machine integration system to connect a plant floor to an offsite, web hosted business system.

Doing it the Old Fashioned Way

The version 1.0 solution of performing the integration was via the tried-and-true method of using an off-the-shelf HMI package, lots of proprietary scripting and a handful of custom-written DLL objects. With a few hundred hours of development and testing, the system was launched with great success and is still running today. The customer does have changing needs and the plant floor is always changing in content and function, so when something has to be done differently, they call us, we add/change some scripting or possibly edit and recompile the DLLs and deploy. It is the standard way of doing things, right?

The Need for a Better Tool

That customized HMI solution worked great for the first customer, and when the second customer asked us to do the same type of integration – we naturally started with the same model. We took the original code, modified it to meet the second customers needs – new scripts, new DLLs. It all went well, and they are still running today. Then the third customer called.

The idea of continually developing custom solutions to each customers needs, making each pay for the customization was becoming harder to justify. As usual, brainstorming started and we decided that there must be a better, more modular way of solving the custom needs of each user. What we set out to find was the right base system we could use to allow web integration (not just display and interaction) of plant floor systems. It had to be open, it had to be powerful, it had to be modular, it had to be customizable, it had to include all of the tools we would need to make it a robust, re-usable base platform for a huge variety of machine types and platforms. And most of all, it had to provide the ability to make system logic and machine layout/quantity changes without scripting or compiled code.

The Better Tool

After exhausting all of the major HMI vendors and eliminating each for one reason or another, we ended up going a non-traditional route. While each of the HMI packages had most of what we required, none of them were the total solution, particularly when it came to allowing integration with external, Internet based systems. What we eventually found was a package from Tridium, Inc. called NiagaraAX. At first glance, the product is not designed for factory floor integration – it is very focused on the building automation market. Marketing aside, the product itself is extremely powerful and robust, does most of the things a traditional HMI does (graphics, alarms, trending, security, etc.) but at it’s core it is web based. It has block diagram type logic and is based on an open Java API that allows developers to create re-usable custom object to perform tasks not included in it rather large internal toolset.

Let’s go back to that third customer. What we were able to do, based on the Niagara platform is to create objects whose task it was to detect a machine state change, package the new machine state into an XML document and upload it, via the internet, to a web hosted business system. By creating the web transaction as an object, with a handful of properties needed to perform the transaction, we were able eliminate the need for any scripting or customizing at the site. In the picture below, you can see what the object and necessary logic look like.

Machine Status Transaction Object, with Logic

By dragging and linking property objects and other logic elements to the ProductionStatus object, we were able to drastically simplify what it takes to make the web transactions occur. What you see above is all that is needed to detect the state of the machine changing to “Production” (ProductionBit in the top left corner), package the “Production/OK” message for the “DemoPress” Machine Id into an XML document and, using basic authentication with the supplied username and password, upload this transaction to the web server provided in the Destination field. If the upload were to fail, the contents of both the outgoing XML request and any provided response from the server would be packaged into an email and sent to the provided email address based on the logic elements to the right of the ProductionStatus object.

What makes this so powerful is that the complicated piece, the XML transaction object, is completely re-usable. Within the Niagara environment, making copies is literally matter of right-click and “duplicate”. What makes that even better is that the system is tree and folder base. Each machine, for example, is represented by a folder. All data points, logic, graphics etc. configured for that machine are within that folder. So, to add another similar machine to the system, the end user simply duplicates the machine folder, renames it and changes the address/names of the data points. No scripting, no compilation, no custom code.

The example above is specific to sending outbound XML transactions from a factory floor network of PLCs to a web server. In addition to sending data, the same system can also receive incoming commands from the web to enable/disable the machine. Using a similar approach to the ProductionStatus object, a “Listener” object was create to accept incoming XML transactions from the web, validate username/password and then update the PLC with the data contained in the transaction. No scripting, no compilation, no custom code.

Summary

The above example discusses how, with the Tridium NiagaraAX platform, Kors Engineering was able to create relatively simple, re-usable modules to perform tasks that would be significantly more complicated using a standard HMI package. Because the Niagara system is 100% web based and the API is open, using the platform to provide interaction between PLC networks and business networks using standard Internet technologies is very straightforward. The example discussed used XML transactions via HTTP post transactions, but since then Kors Engineering has developed additional components that provide data via RSS, HTML tables and using the OBIX protocol. We are currently developing a means to use Web Services to perform the same types of data interaction. If you have questions or comments, please feel free to contact us at sales@korsengineering.com.

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A History of IT Strategy

In the years leading to 2000, many manufacturers realized it was necessary to prepare for a potentially disruptive transition in the IT functions when the turn of the century arrived. With thoughts of internal systems not functioning properly – or even stopping the manufacturing processes altogether – action was required.

Many enterprises solved some of their problems by deploying on-premise ERP systems that were rooted in accounting and Human Resources functions and provided a short term solution. For these applications, the manufacturing processes are an afterthought. These systems were designed with an activity which starts on the top floor, and filters down to the shop floor – which is where, in the manufacturers’ world, the rubber meets the road.

It wasn’t until after companies successfully traversed the dawning of the 21st century that they realized the best ERP solutions actually start on the shop floor and migrate up to the shop floor, not vice versa. It was the manufacturing processes on the shop floor that required refining and improvement before the accounting and HR functions.

It soon became apparent that if the manufacturing process wasn’t efficient, it didn’t matter how well the “top floor” functioned.

The fact is, if you are not constantly improving by driving inefficiency and waste out of the manufacturing process, you are being rapidly overtaken by your competitors that do.

It wasn’t long ago that it was difficult for manufacturers to get a clear picture of shop floor activity.
Today, tying the machines on the plant floor to management on the top floor for a real-time glimpse of manufacturing status isn’t just convenient, it’s critical for a company seeking to remain viable in a competitive marketplace.

Primary drivers for ERP on the shop floor
There are two overwhelming reasons to deploy ERP systems to the shop floor
To apply the same lean quality improvements to data – a highly valuable “product” – as companies apply to the rest of the products manufactured. This means the highest levels of data quality, accuracy, delivery and storage. Incorrect, untimely, or unavailable data about your plant floor can be more dangerous than no data at all. Lean “manufactured” data will help expose plant floor deficiencies and anomalies of OEE, quality and traceability rapidly – even during the shift.
To enable the top floor to manage the plant floor through business controls that assures accountability. This is achieved through check sheets, accurate recipes, and management of diverse processes.
Allowing an ERP system to effectively automate a process not only results in a nearly perfect production process – it also frees an operator to focus on other, value added activities. When additional data is captured, the shop floor is integrated with the top floor for a real time snapshot of traceability, machine output.

Tony Kaczmarek, president of Kors Engineering, has seen dramatic transformations that occur when ERP ties the shop floor to the top floor. He notes that sunlight has a sanitizing effect – by exposing the plant floor, the art of how a plant floor operates becomes a controllable science with accurate measurables available in real time. In fact, Kors Engineering has found that most companies learn more about their systems in the first day bringing equipment online than they’ve known after decades of operation.

Areas for Improvement

ERP on the shop floor brings many opportunities for improvement. Improved quality, decreased scrap and increased production throughput are positively impacted by deployment of an ERP system on the shop floor.

Ralco Industries is an example of a company that tied together its various machines through the Kors Engineering PleXML tool which integrates all of the various shop floor machines for access of a “single truth” that supports informed decision making through the data captured by the system.

“Our inventory accuracy at one time was only about 50 percent,” says Jim Piper, President of Ralco Industries. “We were conducting grueling physical inventories every month, and they would be off within the following week. We never knew if we had enough parts to build a set-up. Every time we did a set-up, it was different. Each of our guys had their own method. This resulted in lost time, inconsistent product quality, scrap, expedited shipments, etc. We knew we had to fix our system.”

A diligent search for an ERP provider that could meet their stringent requirements brought them to Plex Systems, provider of Plex Online.

Ralco started its implementation with the Plex Online Purchasing module, one of 350 functional modules available. “It was great,” says Piper. “We found we could now easily match receipts to our internal purchase orders, and match purchase orders to invoices. We had more control and security over purchase orders, and actually reduced the number of purchase orders. The improved efficiency saved us about $100 per purchase order processed.”

Results for Ralco were immediate and significant:

· Training costs were reduced over 50% because all modules in Plex Online were available from a consistent interface
· Premium freight costs reduced by 20% in the first year, greatly reducing the need to expedite shipments
· Scrap rates reduced by 60%

“We’ve significantly grown our business in a down economy, which says a lot,” said Piper. “We couldn’t have done that without Plex Online. We wanted to differentiate ourselves from our competition, and we’ve done it.”

Additional benefits of Plex Online on the Shop Floor

· Machine recipes – Settings for specific parts are automatically entered for tolerances, speed and other critical requirements which enable a controlled strategy for production.
· Plex Online can ensure that no machine operation is underway until settings are met
· Traceability from station to station allows management to tie into environmental systems, hydraulics and manage energy systems

Increased transparency in the system

The shop floor was dependent on individuals prior to the introduction of ERP and adoption of a formalized platform. Now, any shop floor person can leverage the ERP system to set up and run the machine. This knowledge empowers management and helps drive informed decision making to exploit deficiencies in the system.

Opportunities for Improvements on the Shop Floor

· Quality
· Staffing
· Waste reduction
· Increased production
· Predictive maintenance

Once the shop floor machines are online it’s easy to focus resources, eliminate waste and work more efficiently. Today, there is no reason, regardless where you are, to be unaware of what is transpiring on the plant floor.

Global implications for the Single Source of Truth

The world is getting flatter and your enterprise isn’t only across the street or in the neighboring state – it may be on the other side of the globe. Adoption of Plex Online allows companies to review all manufacturing entities through the same lens, allowing the easy distillation of data using common data points.

Headquartered in the US, an automotive and industrial equipment producer is a growing manufacturer with properties in China, Germany and Mexico as well as the United States – and continues to be receptive to acquisitions when it makes sense for their business model.

The company quickly deploys Plex Online to new acquisitions so they can easily compare results in different manufacturing facilities and strategically determine product design and order fulfillment.

The enterprise extends the Plex Online tool into subcontractors as well. Because it’s an integrated system, subcontractors can directly ship product to OEMs on behalf of the producer. Using the Plex Online EDI module, subcontractors can send an advanced shipping notice (ASN), send electronic notifications, create a PO, and initiate shipping the product and the customers receives the ASN before the truck with products arrives.

It’s an automated process that is simplified and helps integrate all processes – from the shop floor to the top floor – to make certain all facilities, regardless of location, are working together to maximize the efficiency of the manufacturing process and synchronize its processes.

There is a community of Plex Online users eager to share data points about why their choice of Plex Online has paid off and helped maintain a competitive edge and allowed them to thrive in a competitive environment; something virtually impossible without ERP.

Each of the entities referenced in this document are members of a community of Plex Online users eager to share data points about why their choice of Plex Online has helped maintain a competitive edge and enabled them to thrive in a competitive environment; something virtually impossible without ERP.

Plex Systems, Inc. (formerly Plexus Systems, Inc.) is the developer of Plex Online, a software as a service (SaaS) solution for manufacturers. Plex Online includes over 350 functional modules to manage operations from the shop floor to the top floor, including manufacturing execution system (MES) modules such as quality management and machine integration, enterprise resource planning (ERP) modules such as accounting and finance, customer relationship management (CRM) modules such as order entry and tracking, and supply chain management (SCM) modules such as supplier quality and traceability. Plex Online’s SaaS model delivers reduced cost of operations, faster implementations and a continuously improving feature set.

Like many other manufacturers that introduced some of the first Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems years ago, Marwood found itself facing a dilemma. Its very old DOS-based system needed another upgrade, and management had to decide whether it was worth the investment to throw more money at a system that was far less than state-of-the-art.

Marwood made what turned out to be a very wise decision. The company invested in an entirely new system, Plex Online to replace its outdated system. Plex Online not only provides leading-edge ERP support but combines the capabilities of ERP, manufacturing execution systems (MES), quality management, customer relationship management (CRM), shop floor integration, and much more.

Also, because Plex Online is delivered as a software as a service (SaaS) / cloud computing model, Marwood completely avoids the cost, hassles and business disruptions associated with new version upgrades. With Plex Online, there are never any new versions to install. Enhancements are made to the software on a real-time basis at no additional cost.

Integrated System Replaces a Dozen Databases

Plex Online seamlessly integrates data from every aspect of Marwood’s operations, enabling the company to effectively and efficiently manage financials, bills of material, purchasing, receiving, inventory, manufacturing, quality, planning and scheduling, shipping, EDI, engineering change tracking, subcontracting, document control, program management, human resources, supply-chain management, and more.

System users from all of Marwood’s departments and facilities are able to access accurate, real-time data and pull reports anytime, from anywhere.

Plex Online replaced Marwood’s antiquated ERP system as well as 10 disparate databases that hadn’t even talked with each other before, and it eliminated the need for management to track and update a lot of redundant data.

“We’ve discovered that Plex Online is the only true ERP — as in ’enterprise-wide’ – solution,” noted Marwood’s Director of Engineering Steve Spanjers. “Everybody and their brother offers financials, but Plex Online is the only system that encompasses everything, including things that we didn’t even have systems for but tracked through manual spreadsheets.”

PLC Integration is a Gamechanger

Thanks to Plex Systems’ partner Kors Engineering, all of Marwood’s shop floor machines have programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that enable seamless, real-time communication through Plex Online.

“This PLC integration using Kors’ PleXML tool has enabled the system to manage large volumes of machine data and provide detailed shop floor information,” said Kors Engineering President Tony Kaczmarek. “Marwood’s operators have everything they need to meet their rigorous quality standards, all right at their fingertips.”

“Integrating PLCs with Plex Online has allowed all of our machines — many different makes and models — to communicate with each other,” said Spanjers. “With the PLC integration, we can automatically report production at a highly detailed level, increase equipment uptime, and ensure a consistently high-quality part output. It completely changes the way we do business.”

One of the things Marwood found most remarkable about its PLC integration was the fact that it was implemented 100 percent remotely, without any business disruption. After Kors Engineering brought the first few machines online, Marwood brought up the rest of the machines in all three of their plants on their own. This allowed them to optimize their time and resources.

Shop Floor Controls Lead to Customer Satisfaction

The keys to Marwood’s shop floor productivity are the quality checksheets that must be completed before any job is run. Plex Online randomizes the details on the checksheets, ensuring they are carefully reviewed for each job.

For each operation, if the associated checksheet isn’t completed, the machine stops production. The checksheets require supervisor sign-offs. If something is out of spec, the supervisor won’t sign off on the part, and this prevents any quality issues or production delays.

Noted Spanjers, “Marwood customers are delighted with this function, as they can review the number of quality checks and be assured that any part that does not meet quality specifications will not be shipped.”

The combination of the checksheets and the overall PLC integration has been a recipe for Marwood to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction.

“Our customers are assured that all production data can be tracked, indexed and searched, said Spanjers, “and thanks to our machine integration, they know we’re doing exactly what we say we will. It’s a highly reliable system, and it makes them feel confident in us.”

Efficiencies Bring Measurable Improvements

Plex Online has enabled Marwood to achieve measurable improvements in operations.

“With on-time inventory tracking, for instance, we’ve been able to reduce raw materials and work-in-process inventory costs, and we’ve improved our inventory turns by 50 percent,” explained Spanjers. “Our overall productivity has increased, and we are beating the Precision Metalforming Association (PMA) index to which we track our performance, in every single category.”

“Overall, we are doing the same amount of business we were doing before the economic downturn, and we’re doing it with half the number of people. Plex Online is definitely a big part of that.”

PleXML, integrated with Cloud-based ERP solution Plex Online, helps manufacturers by storing and sharing data related to quality, production, traceability, label printing and many other functions. PleXML automates transactions with plant floor machines through programmable logic controllers (PLCs), third party controllers, human machine interfaces (HMIs), visual management systems, bar code readers, printers and other systems.

PleXML enables manufacturers to leverage machine data that has always been available, but previously inaccessible without a great deal of effort due to inefficient legacy architecture and protocols.

“Kors Engineering’s integration of its PleXML tool at multiple Plex Online customer plants has resulted in improved effectiveness and reduced waste that wouldn’t be possible without direct connectivity to plant floor equipment,” stated Plex Systems Vice President Patrick Fetterman. “The combination of plant equipment integration with Cloud ERP software Plex Online is an exciting advancement in the evolution of the plant floor for manufacturers. With PleXML, PLCs and other manufacturing systems can interact with the Plex Online systems, contributing information, and accepting direction from the ERP/MES components of Plex Online”.

“Two hundred million automated transactions validate our position that integrating the plant floor with PleXML and Plex Online provides quantifiable improvements in manufacturing processes,” said Kors Engineering President Tony Kaczmarek. “Each piece of equipment provides relevant, real-time data that can help businesses run more efficiently and reduce decision cycles. There is not a more effective method to improve accuracy, efficiency and provide transparency from the plant floor to business decision makers.”

Kors Engineering, a premier service provider for manufacturing and industrial organizations, today announced continued growth in 2011, winning eight new customers at eight facilities in North America. The new clients engaged Kors Engineering to provide machine integration to ERP services and add enhancements to their manufacturing processes.

New client deployments include a major industrial heavy equipment manufacturer; a supplier of fabricated and value-added assemblies to the automotive and recreational vehicle markets; a manufacturer of fasteners; a safety-critical precision metal parts company that is a supplier of seat mechanisms to the automotive industry; a Canadian corporation providing exhaust solutions for engines and a supplier of cast exhaust manifolds for passenger cars and trucks; a developer of high-performance elastomer-coated materials to manufacturers; a global supplier serving OEMs in automotive, commercial, defense, marine, and industrial industries and a full service supplier of innovated magnesium die casting components and assemblies in the global automotive market.

Kors Engineering is committed to creating transparency and providing visibility into the manufacturing equipment, systems and PLCs on the plant floor. PleXML enables ERP systems to leverage data that has always been available, but previously inaccessible without a great deal of effort due to inefficient legacy architecture and protocols.

PleXML has now integrated more than 650 customer work centers to Cloud ERP Plex Online resulting in an average of over 500,000 automated transactions daily, saving Plex Online customers approximately $20,000 each day in manual data entry. PleXML has automated nearly 140 million transactions for Plex Online customers. Reducing the necessity of staff entering data and the associated errors that manual entry can cause, systems integration enables staff to focus on other, higher value activities. PleXML can automatically gather detailed information about manufacturing and assembly operations.

“It’s virtually impossible to efficiently manage your operations if you can’t understand the performance and health of the lifeblood of your operations: the plant floor,” said Kors Engineering President Tony Kaczmarek. “PleXML – combined with Cloud ERP solution Plex Online – demystifies manufacturing data to make it visible throughout the enterprise, empowering companies to strategically execute decisions quicker.”