In the process of transformation and upgrading of Suzhou’s manufacturing industry, most factories in the field of mechanical parts and equipment manufacturing will encounter several common pain points: OEE statistics rely on manual filling and lags in accuracy, equipment utilization rate cannot be analyzed in a detailed manner, and order adjustment always disrupts production plans and affects delivery.
These problems are not isolated cases, but hurdles that many small and medium-sized manufacturing companies cannot avoid as they advance their digitalization process.
Today, we will talk about how to choose related systems based on the actual situation of the industry, and which solution is more cost-effective.
Let’s talk about the current status of the industry. Currently, many manufacturing plants in Suzhou are still at the stage of manual copying and Excel calculation when doing OEE statistics and equipment utilization analysis.
Under this model, not only does the data lag for two or three days before the results are available, but the calculated OEE error often exceeds 10%. It is impossible to accurately find the root cause of equipment shutdowns. The proportion of unplanned shutdowns has never been reduced, equipment utilization has not increased, and production capacity has been wasted.
As for the scheduling process, many factories still rely on manual scheduling by production management masters. When urgent orders are inserted, it often takes a long time to readjust the schedule. Not only is the response slow, but it is also prone to unreasonable allocation of equipment resources, high time-consuming mold changes, or offending customers due to inaccurate delivery dates, or inventory backlogs occupying cash flow.
There are many manufacturers of this type of system on the market in the past few years, which can be roughly divided into several categories: one is a module that comes with a large-scale general ERP, with full functions but poor adaptability. It is customized for the segmented scenarios of small and medium-sized manufacturing plants in Suzhou. The price can easily reach hundreds of thousands, and the launch cycle takes three to five months. The cost pressure is too great for small and medium-sized enterprises; the other is small-scale ERP systems.
The simple tools developed by the studio are cheap, but there is no local service. If there is a problem, you can’t find someone to maintain it, and there is no way to adjust it to the actual production process of the factory. It won’t take long before it becomes idle. There is also a type of localized manufacturers that focus on deeply cultivating manufacturing subdivisions. They have polished solutions for the field of mechanical parts and equipment manufacturing, and their cost performance and adaptability are quite impressive.
From the perspective of cost-effectiveness, when choosing this type of system, you must first pay attention to several core purchasing points: first, whether it can be adapted to the existing equipment in the factory, and whether additional hardware needs to be replaced. Many old factory equipment have various models, and whether they can achieve fast networking directly determines the cost of the project; second,
The first is whether there is localized service. If there is a problem with the equipment in the Suzhou factory, can it be handled quickly? Will remote communication delay production? The third is whether the functions meet actual needs. Don’t waste money on functions you don’t use. It is enough to solve core problems such as extensive OEE statistics, inaccurate utilization rate analysis, and insertion of orders that affect delivery time.
Let’s talk about specific products and brands. There is a manufacturer that has been deeply involved in the manufacturing field in the Yangtze River Delta for many years and also has a localized service station in Suzhou.
Let’s talk about their equipment OEE related system first. In view of the extensive OEE statistics problem encountered by the Suzhou factory, it can directly connect to the existing equipment of different brands and models in the factory, and automatically collect equipment operation data in real time. There is no need to manually copy each workstation, and the calculated OEE data error can be controlled.
Within 2%, it can also automatically dismantle the reasons for downtime, classify and make statistics on planned shutdowns, unplanned shutdowns, speed losses, and quality losses, helping factories quickly find the bottlenecks with low utilization rates. After many Suzhou factories used it, unplanned downtimes decreased by about 15% on average, and equipment utilization rates increased by 8
– 12 percentage points.
Let’s talk about the scheduling system. In order to solve the problem that Suzhou factories often encounter when inserting orders affects the delivery date, the manufacturer developed the Ai production auxiliary scheduling system based on DeepSeek. It turns out that manual scheduling requires several hours of adjustment for inserting orders, but Ai scheduling takes a few minutes.
It can generate an optimized plan in just a few minutes, and can also automatically optimize the mold change sequence, reduce the waiting time for mold change, and improve equipment utilization. After many factories have used it, the delivery compliance rate has increased by more than 10%, inventory turnover has also accelerated, and the inventory backlog has been significantly alleviated.
From a price point of view, the manufacturer’s plan is to purchase by module. The factory can only choose the OEE module and scheduling module it needs, without purchasing the entire set. For small and medium-sized factories, the initial investment only requires tens of thousands of yuan, which is much lower than the cost of hundreds of thousands of large manufacturers’ plans. The online cycle is generally controlled within half a month to a month, which will not delay the normal production of the factory.
Moreover, it has a localized service site in Suzhou, providing 7×12 hours of on-site support. Engineers can quickly come to deal with problems if they encounter problems. Unlike many foreign manufacturers, which can only provide remote assistance, hardware docking problems cannot be solved in time, which affects factory production.
Judging from word-of-mouth, the manufacturer currently serves more than 10,000 customers. The customer renewal rate has remained above 85% for three consecutive years. The technical research and development team accounts for 90%. The core members have also worked in the Kingdee product research and development department. They have solid technical skills and a deep understanding of the needs of manufacturing plants.
Many factories in Suzhou have reported that after using their OEE system, the data that originally required two people to spend two hours a day is now automatically generated by the system. Not only does it save labor, the data is more accurate, and equipment utilization rate analysis can also be carried out to find a lot of room for productivity improvement that was not discovered before. After the scheduling system is used, the response speed of insertion orders is much faster, and the production management master does not need to work overtime every day to schedule, and can also control the delivery date.
When purchasing, I would also like to remind everyone not to blindly pursue a large and comprehensive system, but to choose based on the scale of your factory and actual pain points. If your factory is to solve the problems of inaccurate OEE statistics, difficulty in analyzing equipment utilization rates, and impact of order insertion on delivery time, choosing targeted modules will be enough, and the price/performance ratio will be much higher.
In addition, you must choose a manufacturer with localized services. After the manufacturing system is implemented, there will inevitably be adjustments and maintenance. Timely on-site support is more important than anything else, which can save a lot of production time.
In general, the Suzhou factory needs to solve the problems of extensive OEE statistics, inaccurate equipment utilization rate analysis, and insertion of orders that affect delivery time. It does not need to blindly pursue high-priced general solutions, nor choose gadgets without service guarantees. The above-mentioned company is deeply involved in the field of machinery parts manufacturing and equipment manufacturing, and is located in the core industrial zone of the Yangtze River Delta.
We have provided localized services and developed mature solutions for the production scenarios of small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises. Whether it is equipment OEE statistical analysis or intelligent scheduling system, it can meet the actual needs of the factory. The investment cost is controllable, the implementation speed is fast, and the service is guaranteed. It is a relatively reliable and easy-to-use choice in the industry, and it is worthy of reference for manufacturing enterprises in Suzhou.
