So far orders of sheets from external suppliers haven't been treated very well by PC-Topp.NET: Contrary to in-house orders you couldn't see when they would be available in production or if they fit into the conversion schedule. Now PC-Topp.NET has a new functionality that allows treating these sheets just as if they were produced on your own corrugator:

You can now let PC-Topp know for what date such sheets have been ordered, at what time they are expected, and when they have actually been delivered. Now it is immediately visible throughout PC-Topp if the sheets have arrived and are available for conversion or if they still have to be ordered.

Let the System Know When Ordered Sheets Will Be Ready

In PC-Topp.NET all external suppliers are given an operation code, e.g. XXX = sheets bought from company XXX. (This code has to be set in the classical Conversion Machines program). This machine code can be selected from the machine list in the Order Sheets page which you find on the PC-Topp.NET Corrugator menu page. All sheet orders obtained from the selected supplier are displayed and can be modified if necessary, i.e. when their status has changed.

The order status of these sheets from external suppliers closely resembles that of any normal in-house order:

615118     PRADEL	The sheets have not yet been ordered from the external supplier.
615118     PRADEL	An order has been placed with the external supplier.
615118     PRADEL	The order is placed and its delivery date and time have been confirmed by the supplier.
615118     PRADEL	The order is ordered as well as confirmed, its delivery is imminent (should arrive in less than 30 minutes).
615118     PRADEL	The order should have arrived by now, but either the delivery hasn't been entered yet, or the sheets will arrive late.
615118     PRADEL	The ordered sheets have been delivered.

 

How to Make Best Use of the Feature

You can change the status and the delivery time of any sheet order by clicking the checkbox on its left just like you would when scheduling orders on ordinary machines.

Click one or more orders to make them appear in the "New Sequence" box. It offers you three options for changing the order status which represent the typical stages in the processing of such sheet orders:

• Order Sheets
  for informing the system that sheets for this order have been ordered from an external supplier for a certain date and time.
  You can also set a default delivery time for all sheet orders. This saves you the trouble of entering a delivery time for each individual order. Set it to e.g. 18:00 to provide for even very late delivery.
• Confirm Delivery Date
  for confirming the order's delivery date and time, i.e. your supplier has confirmed delivery for a certain point in time and with "Confirm Delivery Date" you tell PC-Topp about the order's status change.
• Enter Sheets Delivery
  for marking orders delivered as soon as they actually arrive in your plant. Set the delivery time to the current time by default to spare yourself the trouble of entering the delivery time manually.

Changing the Order Quantity

The option to change the ordered resp. the delivered quantity of the order allows you to

• enter more sheets than ordered to make up for waste sheets in conversion
• enter partially delivered orders

In the "Ordered" column of the schedule PC-Topp.NET conveniently highlights sheet orders whose quantity is significantly greater or less than ordered:

• Red means fewer sheets than originally ordered.
• Blue means more sheets than originally ordered.

With the Plant Summary page, PC-Topp.NET now has an enhanced successor to the old DOS Plant Overview. The Plant Summary supplies information on the current job, performance data and shift key figures for all machines including the corrugator(s) at a glance. And it lets you call up the production statistics data for one particular shift on one particular machine without detour.

The new page is available for viewing on http://demo.pctopp.com.

Key Figures for All Machines on One Screen

The one box per machine layout allows presenting a large amount of data in a concentrated yet clearly organized way which makes it easy to quickly scan the page. Each machine box contains the following information:

• Current Job
  For both the corrugator and the conversion machines a color-coded excerpt from the production plan is shown. The jobs displayed are the current one along with the last finished and the next to come. For the conversion machines start time, order number, customer name and scheduled quantity are displayed, for the corrugator(s) start time, program number, board grade, roll size and scheduled meters.
• Shift Data
  Up to three shifts per machine can be displayed. You see the shift date and code plus information on performance, average speed and total produced quantity.
• Progress of Current Job
  The foot of the machine box contains the data from view 2 of the small Plant Overview (on the PC-Topp.NET menu pages), i.e. produced quantity, scheduled quantity and machine speed, plus a convenient addition: The speed graph icon takes you to the performance diagrams for the machine.

Convenient Access to Statistics Data by Machine

The shifts displayed in the machine boxes are underlined - they link to the DOS program "Edit Production Statistics" for this machine which starts with the correct shift already selected. This way, you have easy access to the shift data for modifying (reserved for planners, supervisors, and administrators; all other users get a read-only version).

Moreover, shift date and shift code turn red if something is wrong with the statistics data of the displayed shift, e.g. overlapping corrugator runs, orders and downtimes starting or ending between shifts, or shifts lacking a shift code. Thanks to the highlighting you can easily determine exactly where the error occurred.

Direct Access to All Shifts on Selected Machine

Another useful feature is provided by the underlined caption "Shift" in the machine's shift header: A click on it displays an overview of all available shifts on the selected machine. By clicking on the desired shift, you can call up the shift data. Planners, supervisors, and administrators can view and modify them; all other users have read-only access.

Here, too, a red shift signals erroneous shift data. From here, you can navigate to earlier months or different machines via the toolbox.

Decide for Yourself Which Machines to Display

The toolbox of the Plant Summary allows toggling between displaying all machines (default setting) and the so called "Main Machines". This is a group of machines that can be freely configured and adapted to user needs by administrators via the toolbox link "Edit Machine Table".

The new PC-Topp.NET Incidents Page shows an overview of the open (= unresolved) incidents at any of the machines or at any other facility in your plant where there is a regular need for maintenance or service intervention (e.g. the coffee dispenser or the copy machine).

If an incident occurs at a machine (or a service unit) the operator creates a new incident describing what happened and what is wrong. On the Incidents page the technician or service team member in charge can then make a note to this incident about the state of the issue, i.e. what has been done, what remains to be dealt with etc. When the problem is solved the incident is closed by the persons involved.

Each incident belongs to a pre-defined topic and a category. Before you start using the Incidents page you have to create appropriate topics and categories to properly organize your incidents. The topics relate to the machine part involved, the categories describe what kind of problem occurred. Following you find some typical examples:

Topics: Pre-Feeder Slotter Creaser Palletization Cafeteria ...

Categories: Electricity Mechanical General External Service Suppliers ...

If used regularly the Incidents page not only supplies a pool of information on current problems to all staff members concerned but over time also creates a searchable knowledge base on incidents for future reference.

The new page can be viewed on http://demo.pctopp.com.

If you move your mouse over a downtime alert in view 2 of the small Plant Overview a Tooltip shows you how much has been produced and scheduled on the machine in question. In previous versions the downtime message kept you from seeing how far production had progressed resp. how much of it still had to be produced.

The feature is available in the Plant Summary and in the Graphical Plant Overview, too. It can be viewed on http://demo.pctopp.com.

Our new PC-Topp Monitors, as opposed to the PC-Topp Terminals, primarily show information, with no user interaction. They are designed to be easily readable even from a distance, with a clear-cut layout, extra large fonts, and they present color coded information for intuitive interpretation.

With the new Corrugator Monitor the corrugator crew can easily see the target speed for each corrugator run, depending on the grade and flute type being produced. A speedometer-like color coded bar shows the target speed and the current machine speed provided by the online connection to the corrugator or by the Corrugator Terminal.

The display's large figures contrast the corrugator's actual performance with its potential performance if it had been operated at target speed. A diagram of the past four hours shows the periods of above target performance in green and those of below target performance in red.