Mattec PMC

Mattec is a shop floor machine monitoring system primarily for the plastics industry.Each injection molder or themo-molding machine is hooked up to the Mattec Server via a MIU. The Mattec client provides an interface screen that allows the loading of shop floor orders and the counting of machine cycles that equates to the number of products manufactured.

Mattec was first implemented at the CIND prior to 2002 but was never developed and fell out of use. It received a new lease of live when a significant investment was made to reimplement the product in CIND and LANC. At CHLM the decision was made to continue to the Production Process MES system for the foreseeble future.

Objective:

• 1 calculation of machine efficiencies/ scrap reprting/ earned hours /scrap & scheduled and unscheduled downtime reporting. Shop Floor Machine Loading (not possible to do in IFS given our routing set up. A product can run on one or multiple machines and mold sizes
• Vendor selection. We run Production Process and old disused version of Mattec - These are primarily focused on the Plastics industry

• So install Mattec and interface Upload IFS Shop Orders/Parts/Routings/Tools(Mold Cavities) to Mattec. Download Production receipts

• Overview - (Non IFS) Install server on the network wire the MIU's to the MES hardware - to count machine cycles - takes a while to set up test and get stable and maintain connectivity especially with heavy machinery
• Overview IFS - Wanted to do the transactions via XML through the ES but Mattec would only accept ASCII. We also wanted to do this cheaply as it was only a once a day transaction (First quote from IFS was $40K)
• a)Had IFS write SQL statements to extract the data to a file that was then sent to the Mattec server via a custom event once a day. Some logic to prevent overwriting file before upload to IFS
• b). For the import treated the Mattec server as a kind of bar-code reader transaction and convert the ASCII file in to XML into ES and then IFS
• c. Purchased Bar-Code connector and two BIZApi's (Shop Order receipt/Production schedule receipt
• d. Avoided any customization of Mattec system which provided a lot more control of the solution
• e. Used Crystal reports to develop the reports via ODBC driver

Outcome

• 4 months to install and interface MES to IFS at one site. New site going live this summer
• Upload to Mattec works well. Download is problematic operationally. We report cases so Cases = machine cycles X mold cavity/Parts per box
• But machine cycle doesn’t account defects or a misfiring of the resin in to mold so counts needed to be verified and adjusted in Mattec before the export to IFS. (called a shift related export in powerpoint presentation which can be provided

• IFS consultants good. More or less on time and on budget.

Resources

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