Hobart Machined Products Deploys Omnitrol Real-Time Supplier Collaboration Solution

Hobart shares automated order status with key aerospace customers in real-time

Aerospace and other manufacturing industries have accelerated outsourcing of manufacturing operations to increase efficiencies and reduce costs. However, moving some of the operations outside of the traditional four walls of the factory has created “dark areas” in the manufacturing visibility process. As a supplier to the world’s largest manufacturers such as Boeing, Hobart was looking for ways to address these issues and become a better supplier by providing real-time production visibility to their customers in order to alleviate the fear of missing mission-critical deadlines. Hobart needed to track work orders through the different stages of manufacturing, and automate real-time notifications on jobs that have quality or delivery schedule impact. Hobart needed these notifications automated as manual tracking was laborious, costly, and error-prone.

Requirements

To provide end-to-end real-time visibility to its customers and internal operations, Hobart Machined Products needed to:

• Streamline receiving, inventory, shipping, and returns of raw material, parts and finished products
• Simplify the creation of customer orders and shop-floor work orders
• Automate the kitting process based on bill of materials and parts inventory
• Prioritize work orders based on customer demand, predictive analytics, and resource availability
• Optimize manufacturing processes by projecting where work orders will be in the future
• Report on customer orders and work orders (where, what, who, when, why)
• Generate notifications to quickly address issues before they had an impact on delivery:
• Track reworks and identify bottlenecks
• Material issues to fulfill future customer orders
• At risk or delayed work orders

The Solution

Most companies attempt to manage customer orders, parts traceability, product quality, and on-time delivery status using their top-floor order processing systems and enterprise planning data. As with most other enterprises focused on supply chain optimization, this approach does not work for Hobart’s high-value and high-mix environment, because of the costs and complexity associated with integrating, configuring and managing commercially available solution packages. Omnitrol Networks, Inc. has broken this cycle by creating a programmable sensor-driven application network solution that taps business intelligence at the edge and synchronizes top-floor with operations in real-time while allowing external customers and partners to access the right information at the right time. The Omnitrol solution provides automation and real-time visibility for three critical aspects of Hobart’s business: inventory, manufacturing, and customer satisfaction.

Automated Inventory and Warehouse Tracking

Hobart manages a complex set of parts and raw material used in the manufacturing of their products. Receiving, inspection, and put-away procedures have to follow strict rules for Hobart to maintain its AS9104 A / ISO—9001:2000 certifications. Errors due to manual processes have an immediate impact on quality, on-time delivery, and margins. The Omnitrol solution was deployed to automate the receiving, inspection and put-away processes utilizing an advanced combination of contact-less technologies, fixed and handheld sensors. Supplier, warehouse, part number, lot, batch, quantity, and ASN information are directly accessed through an easy-to-use web interface. Detailed transaction, part status and inventory reports provide users with a real-time view of what is available or expected to come.

Order Management, Kitting and Work-in-Process

New customer orders are received through a secure web portal or as a result of replenishment signals directly from the customers’ shop floor. The system automatically reserves parts and components required for the new orders, and sends alerts if additional parts need to be procured based on Hobart’s own replenishment schedule. The Omnitrol solution automatically pulls information from the Bill of Material and Inventory modules to assist employees in building a "Kit" before the start of a given manufacturing process. Using a handheld device, shop-floor technicians can see part number, quantity, location, and container information of parts associated to a customer order. Barcodes or RFID tags are scanned to verify that the correct parts are being kitted, and to also track lot and details for complete traceability. Tools in inventory can also be added to the kit if required. Real-time visibility on customer and shop-floor orders is provided by the Work-In-Process visibility module which receives data directly from an Omnitrol smart shelf (see right). The smart shelf not only tracks work orders and employees as they move from one stage of manufacturing to the next, but through a touch screen also provides shop-floor employees with information about the work-order’s route, and allows them to request re-work.

Improved Customer Satisfaction

Using advanced predictive analytics, the Omnitrol solution is able to estimate the completion time of each customer order on the shop floor. Based on schedules of current work orders and a number of other configurable parameters and signals from the shop floor, the system updates the status of each work order. The system constantly updates the estimated-time-to-complete until the finished goods are shipped to the customer. Based on customer requests, Hobart is able to share delivery projections of customer orders and work-in-process information in real-time, 24x7, with key customers, such as Boeing. Customers can access the information remotely, or have alerts about expected delivery dates e-mailed to them.

The Benefits

The Omnitrol solution has simplified the process of entering and tracking customer orders through a web portal that can be securely accessed anytime from anywhere. By choosing an integrated solution from a single vendor, Hobart benefits from a seamlessly integrated view from customer orders through to their inventory system to generate an extremely accurate production forecast with customer feedback capability. Based on what is available or expected to arrive in the warehouse, the system gives Hobart’s employees a detailed view of what they will be able to kit, assemble, and produce –  now and in the future.

Brian Knowlton, Operations Manager at Hobart shared, “not only does the solution save us time and increase accuracy in receiving, moving, and kitting, but it also gives us incredible visibility on all the work orders on the shop floors. There is no more guess work about where things are and when they will be completed. And our customers love that!”

Automating the inventory and warehouse processes virtually eliminated errors and uncertainty about stock level, parts availability, and locations. The main benefit for Hobart is to now have a clear view of their inventory levels and valuation across their warehouses, but also to be able to track the origin of each part that enters the fabrication of their mission-critical products. Shortages are avoided by automating replenishment with Hobart’s suppliers. Low-cost wireless handheld devices have been deployed for employees to scan parts throughout the warehouse, and provide the information right on the shop floor without integration with complex and costly ERP and warehouse management systems.

“The Omnitrol solution provides Hobart’s manufacturing team with real-time visibility on all our customer orders without any impact on our operations,” explained Rosemary Brester, CEO, Hobart. The solution eliminates the tasks of order tracking and manual entry. “More importantly, the solution makes us a better partner to our customers by automatically sharing critical order information with them 24x7.”

Planning, training, deployment and testing of the entire project took less than a week. And because of the use of contact-less technologies, very few changes were made to Hobart’s processes. ROI calculations based only on efficiency improvements showed a positive return in less than six months. Better tracking of reworks and returns were not considered in the ROI. Higher customer satisfaction and new customer acquisition will represent an even more significant benefit to Hobart. Hobart’s customers such as Boeing or NASA now have access to their orders status in real-time. They can better plan their own manufacturing operations knowing the information is more reliable and more accurate than with their other suppliers. 

Behind the solution

The Omnitrol Real-Time Manufacturing and Supplier Visibility (OSV) solution securely integrates business process intelligence with real-time sense-and-respond devices at the edge. As a fully integrated end-to-end solution in an appliance form factor, OSV encapsulates sensor complexity to reconcile asset movements, work orders and location data without any complex and expensive back-end customization.
System – OMNITROL™ Application Network Appliance; OMNITROL™ Edge application Services Engine (EASE™)
Software - OMNITROL Real-Time Manufacturing and Supplier Visibility Edgelets
Sensor Hardware – OMNITROL RFID-enabled Smart Shelf, OMNITROL Mobile WIP with Motorola MC 9090 handheld

About Hobart

If you're not familiar with Hobart, Hobart Machined Products is a manufacturer of precision parts for the aerospace, medical, automotive and electronic industries. Over the past 26 years, Hobart has earned a global reputation for consistent performance ratings and customer service excellence for complex mechanical and airframe assemblies, design, engineering, and precision machining. Hobart is a small, woman-owned business. Hobart has two production centers in the state of Washington. The production facilities produce over 50 high-precision complex machined products at any point in time. The production involves a series of complex manufacturing processes such as CNC milling, turning, grinding, bonding and polishing.

Official Press Release from Omnitrol Networks:

SANTA CLARA, CA (February 10, 2010)—Hobart Machined Products has implemented a real-time operational visibility and supplier collaboration solution from Omnitrol Networks at Hobart’s Ellensburg, WA plant. The OMNITROL Supplier Visibility (OSV) solution automates tracking, production status and delivery projections of work orders for such key customers as Boeing and NASA, through a secure collaborative web portal. As a completely automated real-time information exchange platform, OSV removes the overheads and inaccuracies found in tracking orders for on-time delivery.

OSV automates order and part tracking through wireless sensor technologies, and captures key performance metrics for further production analysis. One such analytics capability includes real-time order forecasting with which Hobart can proactively manage and prioritize order commitments to reduce delays and keep a 100% on-time delivery. Hobart’s customers can now keep informed, anywhere, anytime, through an intuitive and secure web portal without requiring any manual data capture or reporting.

“We have taken the initiative to push our lean manufacturing operations into the new age of collaborative manufacturing,” said Rosemary Brester, President & CEO of Hobart Machined Products. “With the growing challenges of managing outsourced partners, our customers require real-time visibility into order status to proactively and consistently track on-time delivery.” Hobart designs and manufactures precision parts and hardware for the military and aerospace industry, as well as the automotive, medical device, and electronics industries.

Hobart selected Omnitrol Networks’ real-time business intelligence solution because it automates shop-floor visibility while implementing collaborative processes with Hobart’s customers allowing them to manage outside manufacturing operations as if they were a “virtual” extension of their own operations. Omnitrol Networks’ unique model for automated tracking of work orders, quality metrics and delivery status removes manual logging which inevitably becomes error-prone and difficult to synchronize with supply-chain back-end systems. The OSV solution automates this processing and continuously tracks orders, staff and workflows to pinpoint bottlenecks and production challenges before they happen. Through powerful predictive analytics, OSV projects delivery times and completion times at each stage of the manufacturing process. Additionally, by allowing access to that information through secure web services, supplier management is transformed into exception-based collaborative partnerships.

“The advantages go both ways,” says Hobart President Rosemary Brester. “The OMNITROL solution provides Hobart’s manufacturing team with real-time visibility on all our customer orders without any impact on our operations. The solution eliminates the tasks of order tracking and manual entry. More importantly, the solution makes us a better partner to our customers by automatically sharing critical order information with them 24x7.”

“Collaboration benefits both parties,” says Omnitrol Networks President Raj Saksena. “The Hobart installation is another example of real-time visibility providing performance optimization not only for the manufacturer but also for the manufacturer’s OEMs and supply-chain partners.”

About Hobart Machined Products
Hobart Machined Products is a solution-oriented, customer-focused manufacturer of precision parts and hardware. Excelling in complex machining tasks, Hobart partners with customers to meet project specifications. Long-term customers worldwide rely on Hobart for exacting quality and project confidentiality in precision machining; high-end assemblies, design and engineering; prototype production; and tooling fabrication and weldments. For 32 years, Hobart has earned a global reputation for consistent performance ratings and customer service excellence for customers in the aerospace, medical, automotive and electronics industries.

About Omnitrol Networks
Omnitrol Networks is the industry's first end-to-end solution delivering real-time collaborative supply chain. Using predictive analytics directly from shop-floor operations, the OMNITROL solution enables real-time operational and supply intelligence in the aerospace & defense, food, retail and logistics markets. The OMNITROL solution automates real-time visibility into operations through digital sensors, RF and Wi-Fi technologies. Omnitrol Networks, Inc. is a privately held company with corporate headquarters in Santa Clara, California, USA. Additional information about Omnitrol Networks’ products and services are available at www.omnitrol.com.