Production & Process Monitoring

Complete Production and Process Monitoring Capabilities

When you need to know everything that’s happening with your production activities and process variables, you need an MES that delivers the right functionality. From drag-and-drop job scheduling to real-time dashboard reporting and customizable alerts, PlantStar is designed to help you do what you do best. With a full range of capabilities and continuous updates, PlantStar has the solutions you and your company need to maximize overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). It’s time to reach your full potential. PlantStar's goal is to provide you with a data collection and monitoring apparatus that enables you to make informed decisions on the factory floor in real-time. It defines the shop floor, schedules jobs on the floor, and monitors those jobs all in real-time.

MES Features

Get insight into job-specific details on every machine so you can keep track of upcoming projects, potential downtime, reducing scrap and create your customized reports in real-time.

Job Scheduler

Job Scheduler

Simplify job scheduling with a drag-and-drop tool that makes it easy to move projects. The MES shows the current time and tools being used for specific projects, and allows you to update the tools and resources or switch the order of projects in order to avoid collisions.
Job Summary

Job Summary
The job summary screen gives you a quick, up-to-date picture of what is happening on any machine, even those that are not connected to this DCM. With the easy-to-use drop-down menu, you can quickly access important information on a desired machine and make changes to current and future jobs with a touch of the screen.
Job Setup Sheets

Job Setup Sheets
Easily access machine setup and miscellaneous summary information. Setup sheets can include training videos, documents, part images, and more.
Customizable Charts and Reporting
Customizable Charts and Reporting

Eliminate guesswork as you drive change and implement best practices as a result of data at your fingertips. PlantStar lets you create charts based on your own reporting in real time and auto-schedule report delivery directly to email inboxes, printer, or network folders.

Prints custom reports

Schedules custom reports

Prints scheduled reports automatically

Reports can be scheduled to print at a specific time

Reports can be scheduled on a daily basis

Reports can be scheduled on a weekly basis

Reports can be scheduled to print at the end of a shift

Reports can be scheduled to print at the end of each job

Reports can be printed on any network printer or sent to an HTML file.
Real-Time Dashboards

Real-Time Dashboards

View the status of your machines in real time on a large screen with color-coded data.
Downtime and Scrap Reporting

Downtime and Scrap Reporting

Get alerts when your machines go down and maintain a record of each occurrence. The system tracks the top causes of downtime for each machine and displays the percentage of time taken up by each down. PlantStar 4.0 comes with unlimited down, reject, assist reasons.
Instant Alerts

Instant Alerts

Receive immediate email, text, and voice alerts about the status of your machines on the shop floor. Easily choose which alerts you want to receive and select where you’d like them to be sent.
Defect Collection

Defect Collection
Conduct root-cause analysis to improve quality and eliminate warranty costs so you can reduce product recalls, revenue loss, decrease in customers, and damage to your brand. PlantStar prioritizes defects and charts them out in real time so you can immediately view all your defects for any running job or specific shift. Additional features include unlimited user configurable defect reasons, repair or scrap disposition, and ERP solutions integration.
Labor Tracking

Labor Tracking - LBR-TRKG
Labor tracking is designed to forecast, collect, and report labor hours by machine, job, shift or employee. Labor is collected and tracked by personnel logging in and out at a DCM.
Login/logout can be; RFID, barcode, or manual touch screen entry. The same person or people may be logged onto one or many machines at the same time depending on the work being done. For these reasons, it is not a time and attendance system. It will provide a window to where and how labor is used on the shop floor. It can also report time spent at the machine by support personnel. As a job history is developed the job history labor reports can be used to forecast staffing requirements on a shift or weekly basis.
Material Lot Tracking

Single Material Lot Tracking -MATL-LOT/S

Single Material Lot Tracking allows tracking of consumption of one material per machine
using the operator input at a touch screen DCM. The lot number identifies the material.
Consumption tracking, is supported and forecasting is enabled as well.

Multiple Material Tracking - MULT-MTL
Multiple materials can be tracked with this option. Use of each material can be
tracked and forecasting of material demand is supported to improve operations and control.

Multiple Material/Multiple Lot Tracking - MAT-LOT/M
Up to four component materials and four lot numbers can be tracked with this option. Use of each material and lot can be tracked and forecasting of material demand is supported to improve operations and control.

MES Benefits

Take advantage of integration features, tracking capabilities, and a variety of other functionalities that help streamline your processes and deliver quality products.

Operator Tracking

Operator Tracking

Eliminate the guesswork in associating specific users with completed action events. With PlantStar 4.0 operator tracking, users can quickly identify operator action events using simple track-and-trace capabilities.
Labeling and Barcoding

Labeling and Barcoding

Reduce the percentage of recalls due to product label errors with labeling and barcoding capabilities that strengthen compliance, increase productivity, and reduce operating costs while focusing on product traceability.
ERP Integration

ERP Integration

PlantStar has extended its options for importing and exporting data to ERP systems. We now provide multiple machine specific standards to be imported in any one import file.

Our end-of-shift export utility can now notify you of any machines that have failed to report the end-of-shift event. This is usually a sign of network problems between the host and the data collection module. In conjunction with the previous feature, we can export only data for late reporting machines. So once the initial communications problem has been resolved, the data that was missed in the first end-of-shift will be exported. Our export utility can now be set to perform an incremental export. That is, instead of one export per shift, it can now do an export on a set interval. This will allow your ERP system to more accurately reflect the current production status of your shop floor.
Remote Monitoring

Remote Monitoring

PlantStar 4.0 is a fully web-based manufacturing execution system. See the status of your production equipment, OEE, parts per hour, reject % etc. wherever you are with remote monitoring functionality from any device connected to the internet.
Real-Time Data

Real-Time Data

Your machine operators need to be able to access timely data in order to make quick decisions, and PlantStar’s MES provides that and more. Get an up-to-date look at your most important metrics and KPIs on a single, customizable screen. With the Machine Status view, you have insight into the real-time status, efficiency, and production data for any machines you choose. Plus, you can access simplified, color-coded charting with historical and real-time process variable data.
Voice Output
A PlantStar system configured with the Voice Output Option is able to broadcast messages
relating to currently monitored exception conditions such as:

Down states

Idle states

Fast states

Slow states

Assist states

Production exceptions

Process variable exceptions

Reject Exceptions

These messages can be heard on speakers or public address systems.
Process Journaling

Process Journaling - This feature adds to our already extensive web browser interface to
allow operators and shop floor people to record problems and corrective actions. This
feature is used in conjunction with our labor tracking option. The data is time-stamped and
associated with an individual job, shift and employee. It also has a totally browser-based
user interface. So anyone on your network will be able to view the data.
Process Variables

Types of process variables are used to monitor characteristics which are repeated with every machine cycle. Examples are pressure, temperature or time duration process variables.

Some process variables are collected only when new readings are provided by the operator. These types of process variables are used to monitor something which is sampled at irregular intervals. Examples are measurements of sampled parts such as weight or dimensions.

Whenever a reading is collected, it is compared to the process limits which have been defined for a job. If the reading is out of bounds, a process violation is flagged. This violation is displayed on the monitoring windows as a process exception.

Profiles

Their behavior can be graphically displayed on any work station or at the relevant EL/TS DCM. A profile is a set of up to 500 readings of a single process input channel collected during one machine cycle. The input channel can be sampled as fast as once every 10 mS. Limits may be set for the minimum and maximum values (similar to process limits) to flag a process violation. Again, any violations are displayed on the monitoring windows.

Process Monitoring

Process Monitoring allows process variables to be created and tracked during a job. The data can then be viewed on charts or spreadsheets in real-time.

Stay up to date about the process variables that go into your projects, with the ability to easily make adjustments as necessary. If defined for a machine, unliimted process variables can be monitored. Most process variables are collected once per machine cycle. These types of process variables are used to monitor characteristics which are repeated with every machine cycle. Examples are pressure, temperature or time duration process variables.

Physical or Trigger-Based Process Variables

Physical or Trigger-Based Process Variables

Some MES systems limit the user on the number of process variables, but with PlantStar you can input any number of PVs and process variable profiles.
Tailor Process Variable Limits

Tailor Process Variable Limits

Use PlantStar to set upper and lower limits to your process variables and easily adjust as production needs change.
Process Variable Chart Viewer

Process Variable Chart Viewer

View live readings of KPIs including pressure, temperature, injection position and much more in real time. Tweak the chart configuration on the fly for a truly granular view into the health of your machines.
Process Variable Table Viewer

Process Variable Table Viewer

Quickly view all the live readings for your process variables in table form to see if the thresholds you defined are being breached.
Process Trend SPC

The Process Trend/SPC window graphically displays the behavior of any defined process
variable for a machine. The selected number of most recent values for a variable is plotted. Specific points to note are:
The X-axis is the cycle number. The most recent cycle is 1.
The Y-axis is the actual process variable value. The rightmost point is the most recent value. For each machine cycle update, the new value enters from the right, moving the older values to the left. Undefined values show up as blank spaces in the graph.
The dashed, colored lines represent the higher limit and lower limit for the variable. The higher limit is red and the lower limit is blue. The color of the window background reflects the machine's running state. See the
Machine State Colors on-help section for further information.
Process Summary

The Process Summary window displays the high value and low value for a machine's process variables measured during the last fifty complete machine cycles.

The Process Summary window provides quick access to the Process Trend/SPC window for a specified machine and process variable. To view a process trend graph, click on a process variable name or any place on its row of information. A trend graph appears for the selected process variable and machine.
If a process variable is above the higher limit or below the lower limit, that process
variable is highlighted according to the following default color scheme:
Red - value is above the higher limit
Blue - value is below the lower limit
SPC History

The SPC History window displays a line chart of the SPC values collected for a specific process variable and job. It includes two graphs. The top graph is a plot of X-bar values collected from the selected job and the bottom graph is a plot of the associated range values.
The X-axis is the time at which the SPC values were recorded. The number of values graphed may be a subset of the total collected. On the top graph, the Y-axis is the X-bar value
collected for the selected job and process variable. On the bottom graph, the Y-axis is the
range value. The rightmost point is the most recent value for the process variable and job.
Process Select

The Process Select screen allows for monitoring up to fifty process variables that may be defined for the currently running job on the selected machine.
It provides a quick visual reference to monitor the process exception state for a machine. If the last value recorded for a process variable is above the higher limit or below the lower limit defined for the job, that process variable is highlighted according to the following default color scheme:
· Red - value is above the higher limit
· Blue - value is below the lower limit
If a process variable exceeds its defined limits for the job, the machine will be put in the process exception state for that cycle which will be reflected by the color conventions used in the lights frame.
The Process Table

The Process Table screen details the history of a process variable over the last fifty machine cycles. The name, defined limits, and units of the variable are shown in the table heading. If a process variable is above the higher limit or below the lower limit defined for the job, that process variable value is highlighted in the table according to the following color scheme:
· Red - value is above the higher limit
· Blue - value is below the lower limit
If the last value of a process variable exceeds its defined limits for the job, the machine will be put in the process exception state for that cycle which will be reflected in the lights frame.
Process Graph

The Process Graph screen for a variable can be displayed by pressing the "GRAPH"
button on the Process Table screen. The variable name and the units of measurement are displayed at the top of the graph. The high and low limits as defined for the job are indicated on the left side.
The x-axis is the cycle number. The y-axis is the actual process variable value. The graph
can display the last fifty values with the rightmost point being the most recent value. For each machine cycle update, the new value enters from the right and moves the older values to the left. An undefined value will be a blank space in the graph.

What Our Customers Say

We chose SYSCON PlantStar to be our MES system as it provided us with a wealth of production and process information, including scheduling, product specification, OEE data, labor and process tracking in a flexible, friendly and real time environment that assist us in achieving our operational excellence goals. Over the years (20+ years) PlantStar had validated that we made the right decision by providing us with great customer service and support coupled with leading edge technology. I would highly recommend their services to any other company that is in the market for MES system

Fourmark Manufacturing

With PlantStar, we’ve reduced our internal and external corrective action reports by 92.8%, with major gains in first-time quality improvements and customer satisfaction. An initial savings of $400,000 was realized within five months of implementation.

Corporate VP, Tier II Automotive Supplier

PlantStar has proved vital to our Manufacturing efficiency and has introduced the ability to stay connected remotely to make key real-time decisions. It has changed the way we operate!

Cole Melton, Director of Operations