Automatic Setup (Beta)

What is Automatic Setup?

Automatic Setup (Auto Setup) allows for setup time on your machines to be tracked without any user input in real-time. Automatically separate parts produced during setup vs. production, track your total time in setup, identify which operations you've over or under-estimated setup time for, and improve the accuracy of your OEE, all with no manual input.

See the Setups Report for a pre-built view of setup data.

Minimum requirements

1. APM - Automatic Setup currently requires APM to be enabled before it can be used on a given machine.
2. Consistent Cycles: The machine should have consistent part times during production without requiring operator interaction between each part. If a machine can run unattended, this is a good indicator that it's a fit!
3. (Recommended) High-Volume Production: The beta for Automatic Setups was created with Swiss machines in mind. Machines with longer cycles, 1 hour or more, may not be ideal candidates.

Why is this important?
Consistent part times are crucial for the effective functioning of Auto Setup. For a detailed explanation, please refer to this article's How it Works section for more information.

Here is the timeline for a machine well-suited for Automatic Setup.

Enabling Automatic Setup

Turning on Automatic Setup for a machine is simple and can be done for any machine with APM enabled. If a machine does not have APM enabled, it will not appear on the Automated Setup page.

1. From your MachineMetrics account, click the Settings option at the bottom of the navigation panel.
   
   
   
   
2. Select "Auto Setup" from the Settings menu.
   
   
3. Auto Setup can be bulk enabled by clicking the top checkbox along the table header or multiple checkboxes, then Enable. 
   
   When Auto Setup is enabled on a machine, the Starting Activity will be set to your default setup activity type. This Starting Activity can also be bulk edited from the table header Starting Activity Drop-down.
   
   
   
   It can also be enabled individually by clicking the toggle within a given machine's row.
   
   
4. Auto Setup is now enabled! When a new operation starts on an enabled machine, it will begin in the chosen setup Starting Activity. Then when production is detected, it will be automatically transitioned to the production activity.
   
   

How it Works

Auto Setup combines Automated Production Monitoring(APM) and analyzing cycle times to determine when setup has ended and production has begun.

1. APM detects when a machine has changed to a new operation. The new production run will be started in a setup activity.
   
   
2. The machine's part counts are monitored until consistent cycles are detected. This means multiple parts are produced with minimal variation between their part-to-part cycle times. The shorter the cycles, the greater the number of consecutive consistent cycles that must be detected.
   
   
3. Once consistent cycles are detected, the production run's activity will transition to production, starting from the first consistent cycle that was detected. Additionally, the beginning of the setup activity will be moved to the last part detected from the previous production run.

If a machine isn't making consistent parts, Auto Setup won't be able to detect when production has begun and, therefore, won't change the activity type from setup to production. This is why only enabling Auto Setup on machines that can run unattended is essential.

Automatic Setup doesn't prevent operators from starting or stopping setup from the Operator Dashboard, so it can be used without issue even if not every operation on a machine can run unattended and so needs to be manually transitioned from setup to production.