Concrete Products covers the issues that attract producers of ready mixed and manufactured concrete focusing on equipment and material technology, market development and management topics.
Issue link: http://concrete.epubxp.com/i/737337
38 • October 2016 www.concreteproducts.com INNOVATIONS PRESTRESSED The FloorMES E9 is a hands-on tool for supervising and planning precast floor element production. The auto- mated manufacturing execution system (MES) from Finland's Elematic Oyj and Wisconsin-based Elematic Inc. optimizes and balances the production plan and schedules; monitors work process against the original plan; and, engineers note, spells an end to manual pro- cesses and paper piles that have accompanied hollow core fabrication. "An uninterrupted casting process is key to our cus- tomers," says Elematic Automation & Software Director Jarkko Salmensivu. Accurate production and machinery data enables corrections to possible deviations before any bottlenecks occur, he adds, while automated routines for production planning and monitoring help to improve productivity. Elematic developed the FloorMES E9 with proac- tive participation of precast hollow core plants, where automatic monitoring technology has not been widely deployed. "We noticed that our customers tried to carry out production planning by using stopwatches and note- books to improve production efficiency. This, combined with the rapid advance of technologies, inspired us to do our bit and develop a system that would automate the time-consuming planning and analysis processes," Salmensivu observes. The FloorMES E9 offers a single point of access to planning and monitoring precast plank production with an easy-to-use graphical user interface. Automatic key planning functions—and the capability to make manual adjustments if needed—ease and accelerate production planning. Extensive up-to-date status information about the production is readily available and, thanks to auto- matic data storing, production history can be referenced for further process improvement. Automatic nesting places hollow core slabs in the casting beds optimally as the FloorMES E9 improves pro- cesses and reduces strand waste. The system also ensures efficient control over the production machinery. Pro- duction shifts entailing elements of varying fabrication challenges can be evened out. Elematic has piloted the FloorMES E9 through the third quarter, eyeing a fall 2016 release. — Elematic Inc., www.elematic-inc.com Elematic program executes continuous hollow core production The FloorMES E9 Planning (left), Scheduling (top) and Monitoring (above) modules enable users to map hollow core beds according to project, plank volume and target casting window, then track status points from bed cleaning and oiling to tensioning, sawing and lifting. The Elematic FloorMES E9 sunsets the era of paper-based hollow core produc- tion planning and execution.