We’ve all heard the old saying, “what gets measured gets done,” particularly in manufacturing. It’s a mainstay. Manufacturers try to measure everything. And with good reason. It’s crucial to have a good understanding of what is going on in any plant, at any point in time. This can take many forms and there are numerous approaches to do this. The implementation of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is one of them.
KPIs are metrics used when devising strategies, measuring performance, and setting goals. They’re the tool of choice for many manufacturing organizations. They help those in decision-making roles by bringing objectives into focus and providing a framework for analysis.
KPIs reflect critical success or failure that can be used to understand current performance and better prepare for future performance. They are incredibly useful for assessing the many intertwining processes and activities going on in a manufacturing organization. In a world of ever-shrinking profit margins, KPIs can help you save time and increase efficiency.
KPI Publishing & Enact
Many of our customers find it’s useful to share quality Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and lot data from our award-winning quality management platform,
Enact®, with other plant systems.
KPI Publishing simplifies the data exchange process—saving you time and effort.
It’s a standard feature in Enact—and it significantly expands the use and value of quality data by enabling you to share important information with other plant reporting and information systems.
This blog is a quick rundown of how our KPI Publishing feature works, as well as the many benefits and advantages that manufacturers can derive from making their KPIs available to the myriad other systems within their IT infrastructure.
How KPI Publishing in Enact Works
KPI data are aggregated data and not raw or real-time data. This aggregation enables better comparisons between different data assets.
Published KPI files are written in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format—a “lightweight” data-interchange format. InfinityQS employs JSON because it’s a straightforward tool: it’s easy for humans to read and write AND it’s easy for machines to parse and generate.
The KPI Publishing tab in Enact makes it easy to configure who the aggregated records will be sent to, and the data you want to include.
We make it easy to publish Enact KPIs to your plant systems:
- Users select the Enact processes for the aggregated data records that will be published.
- When aggregated records from Enact become available for publishing, Enact sends a message to the web location (URL) containing instructions for retrieving the data.
- Once this message is received, the user plant system can call the Enact API using the subscription key provided in the KPI Publishing page within Enact.
What Do You Need for KPI Publishing?
To use KPI Publishing, you need the following:
- A secure URL able to receive messages indicating that Enact KPI data is available to be published.
- An Enact access key to ensure data security when publishing Enact KPI data.
- Software that can use APIs to retrieve data—and acknowledge when data transfer is complete using an InfinityQS specific access key.
This system diagram shows the data flows when using the Enact Publishing feature.
Data Security & Integrity
Enact retains KPI data for 24 hours. Users can also opt to send a deletion request to Enact. When Enact receives this request, all related published data is immediately deleted.
Enact also includes an automatic
retry policy, which helps ensure that the publishing process can be completed without manual intervention.
What Data Can Be Published?
What you publish is unique your needs. Below is a list of the main categories that are offered with KPI Publishing in Enact:
- Basic Information
- Net Content Statistics
- Requirement Event Statistics
- Process Capability Indices
- Lot Statistics
- Additional Information
Quality & Operational Management Reports
KPI Publishing is designed to easily facilitate the incorporation of Enact metrics and data into existing quality reports, operational reports, or online dashboards.
The following are some examples of Enact metrics that might fit into your existing reporting:
- Sampling Compliance (daily or by shift on-time data collection performance (%)):
- Helps managers stay informed about their team’s on-time data collection performance
- Out-of-Specification (OOS) Events:
- Counts of OOS events help provide visibility into significant process variation issues
- Yield (daily or by shift):
- Helps managers stay informed on process yield issues
- Lot Release
- Helps managers make lot release decisions
Closing
So, “what gets measured gets done.” And we all want to get things done—without a mess, without hassles…in a word, easy. KPIs can help your decision makers by bringing objectives into focus and providing a necessary framework for analysis. So, it only makes sense for manufacturers to want to make their quality KPIs available to other systems within their IT ecosystem. Enact KPI Publishing can make that happen for your organization—without adding to your IT burden.
I encourage you to 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 all of our quality management software solutions and specifically about KPI Publishing in Enact.