Why KFactory virtual engineers should be integrated into your production processes
The general perception about the role of manufacturing engineers was altered in the last decade. This due to the wide spreading of the technology in the office environment, but mainly in the field. Most of activities engineers do on a dailybasis can fall into four categories: communicating, problem solving, analyzing, and planning. For three of these categories, computing devices are the main tools. Introducing data and extracting reports, using information related to human work factors, pursuing inventory control, logistics and material flow, for all these tasks engineers are spending valuable time. Why valuable? Because engineer’s main responsibility is ensuring production success and his place is in the field, not in front of the computer. The value added by an engineer is the one resulted from team management, taking operational decisions and following task completion.
There is a simple alternative
In order to help engineers focus on their jobs, they have to hand over these time-consuming tasks to a reliable person. The simple, safer and cost effective solution is to use robots. Even if it is a virtual entity, a robot – or better said virtual engineer – is able to collect data from all available data sources. He talks in a natural language with industrial equipment and gathers valuable production and equipment status data straight from the source. In addition, he is able to extract information from dedicated systems or solutions, even if there are unstructured files. A very discreet character, he fits perfectly in the current IT landscape and do not require special attention from the personnel, asking them to get used with new software.
An assistant with initiative
This assistant or virtual twin of the manufacturing engineer has abilities that save time, resources and money. Constantly analyzing the data, virtual engineer is able to recognize tendencies and long-time patterns and understand when actions are needed. Next step is notifying process owners when the production is at risk. For example, when maintenance jobs are required, they call the maintenance team. When you are adding new digital solutions or systems to your infrastructure, virtual engineer will proactively connect to this new source of data.
With direct access to real-time data and able to foreseen events that can affect operational processes, virtual engineer inform his real life brother about anything that could affect the journey to completing the tasks.
A helping hand
The KFactory team of consultants is ready to help you in identifying how virtual engineers can be integrated into your production processes. Its members combine the experience gained in over 15 years of hands-on working in the field as a production engineer with the analytical ability of technology solutions consultants. In addition, by adding the flexible and easy-to-configure technology of virtual engineers, you can focus your efforts on achieving the main goal: building the company’s success.