Littelfuse is a global manufacturer of leading technologies in circuit protection, power control, and sensing. Serving over 100,000 end customers, their products are found in automotive and commercial vehicles, industrial applications, data and telecommunications, medical devices, consumer electronics, and appliances. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, United States, Littelfuse was founded in 1927.

In 2019, Cantier was chosen as their Industry 4.0 Implementation partner after successful POC implementation at one of their Philippines Factories. Initially, we have connected 8 machines and focused only on real-time OEE and Machine Status monitoring. Their response and recovery time for down time and repair has greatly improved. Their productivity has increased by 15% in 4 weeks period from the date of Pilot run started. The successful POC created an opportunity to win the Factory wide implementation of our MES 4.0 and Industry 4.0 Solutions. We started the implementation for one of their electronics plants and one of their semiconductor plants. This case study focuses on the details of the Electronics factory.

Connectivity

We have connected 127 machines with our MES 4.0 and SCADA Solutions using OPC UA Standard through our IIoT Gateway. Most of these machines are PLC based such as Allen Bradly, GE Fanuc, etc., and Industrial PCs. We were able to connect some of the machines that are 40+ years old.

Real-time OEE & Digital Dashboard

Collecting real-time data of availability, performance and Quality, the system provide an accurate OEE numbers in the dashboard with drill down capabilities. They are able to see the improvements immediate after deploying the solution.

Their Engineering Manager Richard Tacla Said “ The color coding of the dashboard elements help us to prioritize the issues and drill down for the details. Technicians are able to analyze the problem and attend to it immediately. The historical information help them to learn and apply in the future recovery. With the trends and analysis, we are able to predict the issues in advance and this is driving to minimize the downtime much more than how we used to do before.”

He added “Overall we are able to improve 10% productivity within 3 months of the system is in production. We are expecting to improve further as we continue to use all the functionalities of the System”

Improved Response and Recovery time

Automatic Downtime monitoring and immediate alerts help them to fix the issues faster. By looking at their computer or the dashboard displays located in their shop-floor, they can identify the issues and immediately attend to it for a fix.

Their Plant Maintenance Manager Nolito Valeros said, “ We have tremendously improved the response and recovery time after implementing Cantier MES 4.0 and SCADA Solution. Previously, it took more than a week to come up with the Analysis Report, now we can generate the report in one click and it helps us to make immediate decision. Predictive maintenance capability of their Maintenance module is helping us minimize our downtime impressively”

Maintenance KPIs and Predictive Maintenance

MTTR, MTBF and MTBA dashboards with real-time information help them to keep their factory lean. The current implementation of Usage and Condition based predictive maintenance help them to predict maintenance activities, create work orders and provide necessary alerts.

Machine Learning on Predictive Maintenance and Quality

The data growth in their factory is quite huge. Now, we are working on applying our Machine Learning Model to predict their maintenance and quality issues. The Industry 4.0 Journey with Littelfuse will continue as there are other features we can put together with what we have created to make their factory SMART Factory. At present, we are also working with their Semiconductor factory that is completely Auto-line. This will be a great case for Cantier on our MES 4.0 and Industry 4.0 Solutions Journey n as well.