Andon System Requirement – Decatur IL
Requirement to Immediately Communicate Production Floor Issues
Caterpillar Inc. has implemented the Caterpillar Production System so as to continue to improve their production processes. One of the areas that required a solution to improve their production processes was to determine an effective way to communicate problems and issues from the assembly line on the production floor. This includes the requirement to immediately communicate the work zone within each of the production assembly lines.
It was determined that the communication solution needed to be effective and simple so as to not disrupt the assembly process. It was further determined that in order for the solution to be effective, it needed to immediately communicate the need for support directly to the production support personnel who could resolve the issue.
The Caterpillar plant was targeted for the Andon System was the Decatur IL plant that produces equipment for the mining and construction industry include the largest truck for the mining industry that Caterpillar manufactures. 6,000,000 square feet of production floor.
VersaCall Andon Solution
The VersaCall system solution was VersaCall’s 4 Button Wireless Call Station with stack lights at each work station on the production line with the ability to send communications to any location on the entire site. Also part of the solution is the display software for displaying the status of entire production line as well as the status of each of individual work zones.
The VersaCall Andon system solution that was implemented in the Decatur IL plant need to take into consideration the physical size of the production facility with over 6,000,000 square feet of production floor space in multiple buildings on the site but also the large size of the mining trucks and equipment that they manufacture at the Decatur Plant. The Caterpillar Production System has as a standard a four color stacking. In order for the stack light to be visible on a production line with the large equipment, the VersaCall solution provides for the stack lights to be visible with 10’ poles.
Benefits and Results of the VersaCall Andon System Solution
- Immediate Communication of Production Floor Issues to the Appropriate Personnel
- 35% Reduction in Response Time of Support Personnel to Issues
- Recovery of 10% of Downtime as Production Time
- Complete Production Status Visibility by Individual Production Line and the Work Zones within the Production Line for each of the 29 assembly lines.
- Individual Assembly Line Display Screens
