Welcome back to the blog series about our
Enact® Free Subscription! In
part one of this series—the introduction—I laid out the details of the Free Subscription. As mentioned, each new subscriber begins their journey with Enact with the Quick Setup, the subject of our
second blog.
Here, in blog three, we will describe the
Enact environment included with every Enact subscription. And finally, in part four, we’ll discuss how customers can immerse even further into Enact with the Guided Learning video library.
So, to begin our discussion of the Enact environment, let’s take a quick look back at how we closed out part two:
“Incorporating Enact into a small part of your day-to-day production routine with a Free Subscription is a great way to see if it fits with your industry and to see if it meets your organization’s unique needs. Since the Free Subscription provides access to a fully working version of Enact, you will have the ability to demo the product to others within your company and get buy-in from stakeholders.” And I would suggest that the best way to demo the product is to focus on some of the core functionality of Enact: dashboards and notifications.
How Did We Get Here?
As we mentioned in the Quick Setup blog, data collections in Enact are setup in a very specific way. After you give your data collection a name, the configuration begins with parts and features—parts are what you’re manufacturing, like cups or boxes. Features are the measurements you take of your parts—like height or weight.
Building the data collection then moves on to processes—for instance, the production line, a specific machine, or a tool. And processes are initially built into the hierarchy of your organization (company, division, region, site, and department) at the department level. This can be changed later.
And then the user sets the manufacturing limits for the data collection—target and upper and lower spec limits. These identify the parameters into which you would like your measurements to fall.
The Enact Environment
So, you’ve setup your data collection in the
Quick Setup. You’re ready for data to start flowing in. You anticipate keeping an eye on your processes—and Enact is built to offer you insights into your manufacturing activities like you’ve never seen before.
It’s important to note that the Enact environment that comes with your Free Subscription has been preconfigured in a very specific way for new users. Based on our experience—and success—working with customers over the years, the environment has been pre-configured with best practices. The only thing needed is your data.
The Enact environment we provide has some powerful features pre-configured for the new user to get started on the right foot. Let’s talk about them below…
Work Dashboard
Below is the empty dashboard you see when you complete the setup of your first data collection (you may remember Miguel discussing this in blog #2 of this series, entitled
Quick Setup). This dashboard is where operators or technicians interact with the Enact environment.
Notice the space on the left for notifications, the “finished items” at the center (where you will see data collections that have been performed), and the data collection details information on the right.
Sample Work Dashboard right after your new data collection is created in Quick Setup
This dashboard is preconfigured to help you get the most from your Enact Free Subscription. It is a “data collection home base” of sorts, where you can return to keep an eye on any notifications and upcoming and completed tasks.
And when the data starts rolling in, you’ll have access to the preconfigured Analysis and Summary Dashboards…
Analysis Dashboard
The Analysis Dashboard gives you access to real-time information that you can start using immediately. This dashboard is pre-configured using the tools we'd recommend, but there's always more to explore in Enact. Check out this blog on
dashboards to learn more about the options, flexibility, power, and more.
Here’s an example of how your Analysis dashboard will look after some data has been collected:
Sample Analysis Dashboard
The Power of Analysis
Enact’s unique
analysis methodology simplifies decision-making and enables effective, continuous operational improvement.
Analyze any quality data across your enterprise. Dynamically view information from across plants, lines, and suppliers using dashboards, or perform ad-hoc analyses on any data. Enact enables you to drill down through your data using a wide variety of analysis and statistical tools (
control charts, Pareto charts, Box & Whisker charts, for example, as shown in the image above).
I think the most interesting aspect of dashboards is that you don’t have to feel like you’re wallowing in the details all the time. You can rise above and view the data that’s flowing into your system, easily make comparisons across different products, product lines, sites, or even regions with your Enact dashboard.
“Dashboards enable the kind of analysis that manufacturers can really appreciate. Rather than take an exorbitant amount of time with paper and pencil, you can make the kind of comparisons you need to make with a dashboard in a few clicks of the mouse. And that can only be better for your operations; rather than slogging through compilations and calculations once a quarter to see how everyone is doing, isn’t it better to just keep an eye on things all the time and know how everyone is doing at all times?”
Summary Dashboard
As mentioned, your preconfigured Enact environment comes with a Summary Dashboard as well as an Analysis dashboard. The Summary (or aggregated) dashboard will keep growing each and every day you collect data (because that's when aggregation happens—on a daily basis) and enables you to see how your processes are doing…and make better strategic decisions.
Here’s an example of how your Summary dashboard will look after some data has been collected:
Sample Summary Dashboard
There's a lot in this image to absorb, so if you'd like to learn more about
dashboards please feel free to read this and
other blogs about Enact.
Notifications
As mentioned, notification rules are configured for the user with the most common starting point.
As Miguel stated in the
Quick Setup blog, notifications display on the pre-configured Work Dashboard. Below is an example of a Work Dashboard, generated after the user’s data collection started collecting data—notice the violation on the left.
Sample Basic Work Dashboard with notifications
Notifications can be generated for violations of the limits you configure in the
Quick Setup.
Notice in the image above that notifications are color-coded (red for a limit violation). If you perform timed data collections with Enact, you will also see green notifications indicating those.
Enact is all about “obtaining visibility across your enterprise, gaining operational insights into your processes, and using the actionable information you gain from those insights to truly transform your operations,” InfinityQS COO, Doug Fair, states in this
blog series. Notifications help you do that.
Sharing Notifications
When there’s a limit violation, you don’t want to keep it to yourself. With Enact, you can make it so the system automatically notifies whomever you need or want to right away so it can be fixed ASAP. Obviously, the operator would need to know right away, because they are responsible for controlling the process. And, of course, a supervisor would want to know right away as well.
Or, if there were a statistical violation, you could notify just the quality engineer, or whomever was supporting those operations.
Enact notifications make it easy to spot and share any type of violation with your co-workers. Everyone is always on the same page.
Enact enables you to set up email notifications so you can do just that.
Sample Enact Email Notification
The incredible visibility across your enterprise that Enact offers helps you gain operational insights into your processes—insights that lead to
actionable information that can help you improve your manufacturing processes and truly transform your operations!
Closing
So, I think it’s easy to see that the best way to demo the product is to focus on some of the core functionality of Enact: preconfigured dashboards and notifications. They are visual, useful, and powerful tools that will help you keep an eye on and improve your manufacturing processes. Join us for the next installment in this Enact Free Subscription blog series—a look at Guided Learning.
Take advantage of the technology at your fingertips today: contact one of our account managers (1.800.772.7978 or
via our website) for more information about a Free Subscription to Enact.
Please read the other blogs in the
Enact Free Subscription series: