New version launches offering users better performance, improved charting, enhanced reporting and additional OEE capabilities

Lighthouse Systems has announced its latest version of one of the market leading factory information system, Shopfloor-Online.  The new version of the software introduces many feature improvements along with an array of new capabilities.  These include a vastly improved Downtime, Production Counting, Spoilage and OEE capability; allowing data to be enetered manually or directly from PLCs via OPC. It also includes new SPC charting visualisation, enabling hundreds of charts to be loaded quickly; faster reporting and a greater choice of report formats, along with more customisation and scheduling options.

In version 4 of Shopfloor-Online, Lighthouse has eliminated ActiveX controls to make enterprise-wide deployments easier.  Also, charts and reports are now rendered server-side to reduce network traffic, thus making the system work quicker and leaner.  This makes it possible to deploy the software in a multi-site scenario from central servers across a WAN. 

New SPC charting visualisation means that charts are calculated on the server and presented as images.  This production is faster than before and more fine-detail control has been provided regarding chart presentation.  Also, multiple process views can be constructed so that operators can quickly see the information they need in the most useful form for them in order to diagnose process problems.

Tim Barber, director of Lighthouse Systems, comments: "This version of Shopfloor-Online offers a whole range of improvements and new features.  We have responded to user input to produce some quite staggering results in this version.  Reporting is a key area of interest for our users and we have made this area much faster and feature rich in terms of the standard options available and the level of customisation possible.  Also, report scheduling couldn't be easier with just a single click. 

"In addition, a significant development is in the area of OEE, downtime and spoilage.  Here we have improved the downtime data capture, allowing machine and production downtime to be classified in many ways and entered manually retrospectively.  We have also introduced a wide range of OEE and spoilage related reports that provide the high level management view and are supported by detailed investigative analysis to identify where the losses have occurred.  We are very proud of the new version and look forward to user feedback." 

A built-in OPC client allows connection to OPC servers for high speed automatic data capture from multiple PLCs concurrently.  The interface supports production and spoilage counts, downtime events (with reason codes) and process parameters, such as temperature and pressures.  This means production data can be collected without relying on the operator, saving them time. But more importantly it makes production data more timely, accurate and available. The dashboard has been enhanced to provide more information and greater operator interaction and operators are now able to include grid reports and charts on screen, as well as line layouts.

Finally more work has been put into the inventory management functionality of Shopfloor-Online. Inventory can be created with unique codes to satisfy a particular customer naming convention. Barcode labels can be automatically printed as production is made (e.g. pallet ticket labels).