Evaluating Machine Monitoring: Why Ease of Implementation Should Matter to Your Whole Team

These days, it’s hard to find a factory that isn’t obsessed with improving productivity. No wonder more manufacturers—even those who’ve held back in the past—are exploring what machine monitoring systems have to offer. 

No doubt about it: downtime is your factory’s arch-enemy. It depresses your profits, dulls your competitive edge, and results in lost opportunities. Every day that you operate at reduced capacity, you’re essentially throwing money away.  

But you can’t improve performance until you can measure it—not to mention identify where your problems lie. A good machine monitoring system not only measures machine uptime and downtime, but reveals why that dreaded downtime is occurring. 

Unfortunately, one of the great ironies here—one that prevents many manufacturers from acting—is that, in order to implement a new system, you need to incur additional short-term downtime. But not all downtime is created equal.  

Fact: Conventional Machine Monitoring Can Take Days to Implement

It’s no secret that most machine monitoring systems are time-consuming to install and can take several days to complete. During that time, machines are offline, operators sit idle—and depending on the technology, you may even need to bring in pricy outside consultants.  

That’s why, when evaluating OEE and machine monitoring systems, it’s critical to include implementation time in your cost comparisons. Ask: how long will implementation take, per machine? What are the IT requirements? Who performs the installation? What kind of training is required? 

And, finally: what will the impact be on your team, across every level of management? 

Fact: Amper Gets You Up and Running in an Afternoon 

When we designed Amper, our goal was to create the simplest, most-affordable machine monitoring solution available. So, one big differentiator between us and other systems is that our implementation is unusually fast and simple.

For small and mid-size factories, Amper implementation can typically be completed in a single afternoon, completely in-house. In a nutshell:

• Our non-invasive sensors work by measuring electrical activity, so they can be clipped on externally. There’s no need for PLC integration. Each sensor can be installed on any machine in about 10-15 minutes by one of your maintenance technicians.
  
  
• Our sensors can be linked to a Wi-fi or cellular connection gateway, so installation requires little to no IT involvement. 
  
  
• Operators can install the sensor while the machine remains idle. There’s no need to tear a job down or reprogram it; no extra first-piece inspection or heightened risk of scrap.  

And although we do offer training (both live & on-demand) our software is so easy-to-use, your team will be using it in no time. 

This single differentiator is why so many manufacturers who’ve procrastinated for years on updating their factory, ultimately choose us as their machine monitoring provider.

What This Means for Each Member of Your Team 

Time is money. That’s why it’s important to consider how Amper’s quick implementation could positively impact each member of your management team in practical terms:   

• Your Controller:
  Controllers tend to approve of Amper anyway because our system is more affordable than others. But they especially love that, with Amper, machines aren’t idle for more than 10-15 minutes, operators aren’t sitting around collecting wages, and no outside labor will inflate the price tag.   
  
  
• Your Manufacturing/Engineering Manager:
  Similarly, manufacturing or engineering managers appreciate that implementation day can still be a productive workday—and that they can anticipate just how long each machine will be impacted.
  
  
• Your Quality Manager:
  Your quality manager will love that Amper sensors can be installed while your machines are in set-up mode—no need to undo/redo setup, so no added risk of scrap and defects. 
  
  
• Your Operation Manager:
  If there’s one thing most operations managers hate, it’s wasted labor. There’s little of that here. Operators simply step away for their 15-minute break while a technician does the work.
  
  
• Your CI Manager:
  This one’s easy: the sooner your machine monitoring system is up and running, the sooner you can begin your journey to data-driven continuous improvement. 
  
  
• Your HR Manager:
  Sometimes, HR managers get left out of these conversations. But keep in mind, installing a machine monitoring system represents a change to your workforce—and HR plays a huge role in handling change management issues. Amper’s ease of implementation tends to calm change management concerns, and because it’s a safe process, there’s no additional risk to workers. 
  
  

If fear of the implementation is one of the obstacles standing between you and a machine monitoring system, Amper may be the solution for you. Learn how Amper will make your factory more productive and see for yourself how easy it is to install—take advantage of our free, 30-day pilot program. 

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