Production execution & performance

GE Intelligent Platforms has announced a new version of Proficy® Plant Applications, providing improved global functionality and system performance, with more user interface options and conformance features. Plant Applications facilitates valuable manufacturing intelligence capabilities within the Proficy software platform and helps companies holistically improve operating performance and production execution.

Proficy automates and integrates the information activities in production execution and performance management, including managing and applying targets and limits for processing and quality parameters, logging actual data about processes and production events, as well as deriving relevant “intelligence” from raw data for situation awareness in real-time. In addition, Proficy facilitates data analysis for decision-support, as well as routine report generation for compliance and disclosure activities. The automation of these activities enables “management by exception” allowing production personnel to focus on improvement initiatives with enhanced situational intelligence.

“Manufacturing intelligence on an enterprise scale helps businesses optimize and balance performance across the often competing operational priorities vital to sustainable business success,” said Sheila Kester, General Manager, Operations Management Software for GE Intelligent Platforms. “A core value of Proficy Plant Applications is its ability to make business sense out of mission-critical production data, in real-time. Management needs timely, accurate, actionable information to make informed business decisions.”

Proficy offers manufacturing intelligence that involves real-time integration of the information across the various aspects of manufacturing operations. It provides an information environment infused into the operation that enables tracking and optimizing operating efficiency, product and process quality, environmental and safety compliance, schedule execution, WIP inventory, genealogy and traceability, and more. With Proficy, users can:

· Manage business objectives and drive them into the manufacturing operation, such as: production schedules, work instructions, quality specs, bills of materials, machine set-points, and recipes

· Track the actual outcomes as they occur automatically, with minimal intrusion on the operators, such as: quality data, process conditions, energy consumption, environmental events, and other adverse situation events, like downtime and waste

· Assess conformance and communicate automatically with pop-up alarms and automated emails for fast appropriate response to prevent and minimize problems, to assure compliance and optimum performance

· Capture details of causes and actions taken related to exceptions like downtime events, scrap/waste, off- spec quality, schedule deviations, and the like.

Proficy is an example of how GE’s $4 billion-a-year software and solutions services businesses are helping customers improve productivity.