A door opens with a creaking sound. Faint groans are heard just around the corner. And the distinct sight of a completely bandaged entity is seen shuffling down a corridor. Is it a haunted house? A scary abandoned building? Or is it your manufacturing process?

While haunted houses can be a fun way to celebrate Halloween, they’re not so fun when they reflect a harsh reality within your plant. That creaking door? It’s the sound of a maintenance worker opening a machine to address another ghost problem because of unplanned downtime.

Those Frankenstein-like groans? That’s the sound made by interdepartmental staff whose lack of interoperability between their department software and that of a critical downstream department doesn’t match.

And the mummy? That’s just another broken process that has been papered over with workarounds and temporary fixes until you can’t even see what the process looked like to begin with.

For your Halloween, enjoy this a fun look at haunted manufacturing facility tricks alongside data-driven treats that we think are the sweetest of the spooky season.

Hunting for Ghosts

Manual data collection and analysis has long been the bane of manufacturing. Error-prone and hard to analyze, it allows more and more problems until no one knows where they come from. Unplanned downtime, missing KPIs, and other issues hover over machines and staff like specters from another world.

To eliminate the ghosts in the machine, take control of your data. Manual data and analysis are banished with real-time analytics that utilize a smart manufacturing platform and advanced software from Plex. MES solutions like this let you see what is happening, why, and when.

Additionally, Asset Performance Management Software lets you keep equipment healthy and know the exact maintenance required to address problems quickly. And with added automation technology, you can automate workflows to drive the ghosts from all your machines and optimize your manufacturing processes.

Grab Your Pitchfork

Driven by budget concerns, need for more knowledge, or siloed decision-making, companies often cobble together standalone software on a per-department basis. It is only after the fact that they try and stitch it together into a coherent system.

The result is an interoperability nightmare that works less like a tech solution and more like Frankenstein’s monster. But as siloed data and systems that don’t communicate continue to lumber along, “It’s Alive!” is quickly replaced with “How do we kill it?”

The Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform™ helps you get rid of Frankenstein’s monster. With a single source of truth and standardized data analyzed in a single platform, there is no need to take up torches and pitchforks.

Instead, the platform offers a comprehensive suite of software solutions. It integrates seamlessly with others, so everyone speaks the same language, looks at the same data, and executes confidently in real time.

Step Away from the Horror Movie

Many manufacturing processes look more like a horror-movie props department than a start-to-finish way of producing finished goods. However, manual data and analysis limits in traditional manufacturing mean that band-aid solutions are the norm rather than a permanent fix. Over time, the process has little value, and no one can really see what’s going on in there.

Plex software lets you use real-time data and advanced analytics to monitor your real-time processes. With advanced MES, a production monitoring system, a QMS, or all the above in a smart manufacturing platform, you can unravel the mummy and fix the process.

Your real-time data combined with cloud-based analytical insights means you can implement process improvement and optimize processes rather than bandage them. And the closed-loop data system lets you continue to monitor and adjust so you can put away the bandages for good.

Turn Your Fright into Fun

No one wants to live in a haunted house, let alone work in one all year round. If you’re ready to get rid of the jump scares, take control of your data, and keep the frights in your life to October 31st, then learn more about how Plex can de-haunt your operations here. And, most importantly, have a happy and safe Halloween!