Vorne participated in FABTECH International 2009, which ran from November 15 through November 18th 2009 in Chicago. FABTECH has a particularly strong focus on metal forming, fabricating, and stamping – and it offers over 100 technical and professional sessions to attendees.

With a strong emphasis on the practical application of lean manufacturing principles, Vorne demonstrated the XL Productivity Appliance™ to an international audience, with many attendees traveling in from Europe and Asia. Some of the strongest interest came from companies that wanted to experiment with performance management techniques in their facilities without a major commitment of time or money – a perfect fit for XL products.

Vorne has been invited to present an educational seminar on Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) to the Purdue University Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) on November 11, 2009. The Purdue University MEP program has a strong practice area in lean manufacturing.

One of Purdue University’s MEP member companies recently implemented a complete production tracking and visual factory solution with Vorne XL products and achieved an 8.8% improvement in manufacturing performance. To learn more about OEE, visit our educational site at www.oee.com.

One of the world’s largest manufacturers of advanced technology automotive systems recently contacted Vorne for assistance in implementing a visual performance management solution for one of their North American plants. Within days of receiving their XL Trial unit, they were collecting actionable information and found that certain categories of non-operation time represented their largest productivity loss – something they had not been able to previously measure or quantify.

Interestingly, they benchmarked two other plants before starting their trial, and found that the XL800 Productivity Appliance™ was the lowest cost solution and the ONLY solution that enabled them to achieve effective data collection. The result – well before their XL Trial ended they expanded their application to cover an additional 18 production assets.

Ready to try XL? Sign up here for a free 90-day trial.

Achieving sustained improvements in productivity is a critical goal for all manufacturers. After installing the XL Productivity Appliance™ on one of their lines as part of a continuous improvement program, Aisin Electronics saw an immediate 12% bump in productivity. Even more importantly, two years after rolling out XL across seven of their manufacturing lines, Aisin has achieved sustained increases in OEE (over 20%) and sustained reductions in Down Time (15% to 20%).

Lean manufacturing and XL products make for a powerful combination. To learn more, call Vorne at 1-877-767-LEAN, email us, or request a free 90-day XL trial.

One of the unique features of XL products is their ability to automatically generate print-ready barcodes for reason codes, changeovers, SKU identifiers, flexible time schedules, and other information. Operators frequently prefer to use barcodes as an interface to XL devices because they are simple and fast to scan. Now, to make it even easier to get started, Vorne has released the XL Barcode Kit, which includes everything needed to use barcodes with XL devices. Contact us at 1-877-767-LEAN for more information.

A member of a lean improvement team at Konica Minolta, a global imaging products manufacturer, contacted Vorne with three specific goals: bring visuals to the plant floor, enable management to view production data through a web browser, and automatically generate production reports. XL provides all of these capabilities (and more) out-of-the-box, so the XL600 was selected for a 90-day trial. Konica educated their plant floor team on Takt Time, and after three days the team was producing at 115% of plan, set a new production record, and broke into spontaneous applause on the plant floor!

Would you like to try XL in your plant? Sign up here for a free 90-day trial.

The all-new Total Production Timeline™ provides XL customers with a visual snapshot of manufacturing performance – it’s a great tool for understanding how productive time is lost in your manufacturing operations. The Chronological View provides a visual trace of how the state of the production asset changes over time, making it much easier to detect patterns of problems. The Grouped View provides aggregate information – presenting a top-level summary of production time. The integrated zoom feature makes it easy to zoom in on problem areas, and information is always available in both graphical and tabular forms.

The Total Production Timeline (TPT™) is available as a FREE upgrade for all XL customers. Contact Vorne at 1-877-767-LEAN or email us for more information.

The eighth annual Honda Lean Network Conference was held this week in Covington Kentucky, with the keynote address delivered by noted author and recognized lean expert James P. Womack. The Honda Lean Network Conference provides an excellent opportunity for companies to share best practices for achieving truly world-class manufacturing, and Vorne was one of a select group of companies invited to exhibit and present lean-based products such as our XL Productivity Appliance™.

Did you know that Vorne is an industry leader in the development of educational materials for lean manufacturing? Vorne maintains an educational site focused on OEE, as well as the lean-focused Vorne Learning Center.

Vorne is pleased to announce the immediate availability of a comprehensive and fully integrated Down Time Analytics suite for XL products. Key features include:

Down Time Analytics is available as a FREE upgrade for all XL customers. Contact Vorne at 1-877-767-LEAN or email us for more information.

How much money could you save by seeing down time in real time – instantly when it happens? By knowing the exact status of your production lines at all times? The new All Production View makes it easy, by collecting key metrics and KPIs into single page summary views for all production lines or cells monitored by XL products. With twelve different viewing options, it’s a snap to zero in on the information you need.

The All Production View is available as a FREE upgrade for all XL customers. Contact Vorne at 1-877-767-LEAN or email us for more information.

Takt Time is an important concept for lean manufacturing, and Vorne frequently fields questions from companies trying to better understand Takt Time and how to best utilize it in their manufacturing operations. Our new Takt Time Lean Brief provides an in-depth explanation of Takt Time, the benefits it provides, and also covers related topics such as how to effectively use Takt Time on the plant floor, and how Takt Time relates to standardized work and flexible manning. Let us know what you think! Email your questions and comments to lean@vorne.com.

Vorne is pleased to announce a parts database feature for XL products that makes it super simple to associate production standards (e.g. Takt Time and Ideal Cycle Time) with each part that is run on a line or cell. Production standards can be entered directly into XL or imported from an external system. With the parts database, selecting a part to run is as simple as three mouse-clicks!

The parts database feature is available as a FREE upgrade for all XL customers. Contact Vorne at 1-877-767-LEAN or email us for more information.

Vorne is pleased to announce that the XL800-32080T is now available with CE marking. The XL800 Productivity Appliance™ is a highly versatile and cost-effective production monitoring and performance management solution, and is a very popular product for lean-focused companies. As lean manufacturing has continued to gain popularity across Europe, Vorne has fielded many requests to offer XL to this market. In response, the XL800 is now readily available to European manufacturers.

For more information, contact Vorne at 1-877-767-LEAN.

As part of Vorne’s Data Anywhere, Data Everywhere™ initiative, the iPhone™ mobile platform is now directly supported by Vorne XL products. A broad range of live production data can be viewed in real-time on iPhone and iPod® touch devices, including OEE, down time, production rates, counts, cycle times, performance to takt, and much more. With the iPod touch available for as little as $225, it makes a great pocket interface to production (via Wi-Fi® network).

The all-new mobile interface is available as a FREE upgrade for all XL customers. Contact Vorne at 1-877-767-LEAN or email us for more information.

Vorne is pleased to announce a broad ranging partnership with UK lean manufacturing experts OptimumFX. OptimumFX has extensive experience in the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) market, and a strong background in lean manufacturing.

One of the interesting approaches that OptimumFX has developed is their OEE Journey™, which takes companies from manually calculating OEE to enterprise-wide performance management through a series of well-defined steps. With an impressive roster of client success stories and a passion for helping manufacturers improve productivity, we highly recommend OptimumFX as a partner for your next lean initiative.

Contact OptimumFX for more information on how their OEE Journey can accelerate your lean initiatives.