Company Announcement - Power management solutions are crucial to manufacturers to keep their production on track and minimise their power usage during tough times

By Stuart Scanlon, sales director for New Era Solutions
With South Africa's power shortage here to stay, businesses are not only looking for ways to keep 'the lights on', they are investigating means to improve their energy efficiency without compromising on productivity. Manufacturers in particular now have to take a serious look at their consumption and may be facing the possibility of significant increases in the cost of power during peak periods if they can't cut back on their usage.

As some of the most prolific power consumers in South Africa, manufacturers are often the first port of call when it comes to alleviating the pressure on the national grid but at the same time they can have perishable raw materials that won’t wait and customers that demand the same high levels of service. This has meant that many manufacturers are implementing meters connected to their Eskom power connection to monitor their electricity usage with the hope of using the data that is gathered by the monitor to find ways to optimize power usage. However, this type of ‘high level’ monitoring only scratches the surface and doesn't give the detailed insight that is required to implement meaningful changes. So what can a manufacturer do in order to better manage their production during times of critical power shortages?

“If manufacturers could carefully monitor the machines on their shop floor to understand how their power usage is spread then they could optimize workflows,” says Stuart Scanlon, sales director for New Era Solutions, an authorized Epicor partner in South Africa. “Being able to do this would be invaluable to production planning as it would mean knowing exactly which machines are using what and how productive they are in comparison with each other. This would dramatically change the way businesses manage their shop floor processes.”

Maximise electricity usage and productivity
“By plugging in a small device a manufacturer is able to monitor electricity usage compared to productivity using their Enterprise Resource Planning software,” says Scanlon. ”This enables the manufacturer to drill down and understand the efficiency of each machine and plan their demand. This not only works to take the pressure off the national grid, it also saves money and makes the manufacturer more productive.”

“Knowing the detailed statistics for each machine on the shop floor enables the manufacturer to work out the most efficient start-up and shut-down sequence. It also helps to identify problem machines that are consuming too much power per unit of production. In instances where manufacturers are running at capacity and exceeding their power quota, this could be the only way to monitor the usage and avoid serious financial penalties,” adds Scanlon.

Added to this, it enables companies to see how much power other areas use like administration, air-conditioning and production. Knowing this means they can start to implement power-saving solutions such as solar heating or more efficient cooling systems. Certain machines might need to be replaced if they use too much power and require excessive maintenance when compared to their output.

What is needed are software systems that go well beyond a so-called “system of record” to produce meaningful information and analytics based on the underlying business data.  Analytically-driven manufacturers know what it takes to turn data into information, information into insight, and insight into action.

Because the ERP system uses the actual electricity and fuel costs, and it knows the production plans for current and planned manufacturing volumes, it can easily calculate projected emissions and draw up a budget for the environmental costs. This means that manufacturers can also get a handle on carbon accounting to satisfy legal demands, public relations, and marketing demands, to improve the efficiency of their operation.

Global challenges call for responsiveness
KPMG recently published Industrial Manufacturing Megatrends Research  which highlighted international trends that impact manufacturers on a global scale.  While these challenges may vary considerably from one region to the next, the common theme throughout is responsiveness.  The efficiency of manufacturing processes is critical to competitiveness and factors that threaten this need to be addressed without delay. 

According to the report, companies are actively researching, testing and implementing new energy sources, materials, processing technologies and logistics strategies to become more energy efficient, reduce their carbon footprint and offset the cost of materials. Rising demand and the radically increasing competition for energy and raw materials means that the introduction of energy saving technologies, optimised processes and optimum use of resources should enable efficiency and sustainability at every stage of a product’s lifecycle, from production to operation to recycling.

Increasing responsiveness can help a business improve operational performance and accelerate its productivity, through information being available at people’s fingertips and allowing more informed and rapid decision making. Historically information in manufacturers was limited in volume and ‘passive’; i.e. there when (you knew) you needed it, if you were lucky! This stifled responsiveness because companies had to put time and effort into getting the right information. As businesses increased their use of systems, information became more prolific and ‘active’ – structured data analysed to drive answers to key questions. This helped manufacturers to know what they needed to do, but problems of data overload often limited the organisation’s ability to act. It was difficult to see the wood from the trees in the time available. Now, information is becoming intuitive – it’s hidden in plain sight and increasingly fed to managers in the right format and context at the time they need it, in the form of succinct answers to questions. This evolution of data in organizations is one of the key reasons manufacturers are able to become more responsive, while at the same being power savvy.

The power crisis is causing enormous challenges but it is an opportunity to re-evaluate your electricity usage to maximize productivity, reduce costs and maintain profitability to keep pace with the added pressure of global trends to ensure that your business can survive anything.

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New Era Solutions, an Epicor value added reseller in South Africa for over 10 years, specializes in integrated and customizable IT solutions in partnership with global specialists in ERP, warehouse management systems (WMS), customer relationship management (CRM) and mobility, offering a single-source solution where customers benefit from one seamless working relationship that has all the right connections. www.newerasol.co.za

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