Memex Automation Engages Investor Relations Firms

We, at Memex Automation, engaged a couple of companies to help us with investor relations and shareholder communications.  These are exciting times with a world of opportunities in front of us!
The full press release is below:

Memex Automation Engages Investor Relations Firms

BURLINGTON, ON- (Marketwired – Mar 26, 2014) – Astrix Networks Inc. (TSX VENTURE: OEE) operating under the trade name Memex Automation Inc. (“Memex” or the “Company”), the global leader of manufacturing M2M productivity solutions, is pleased to announce that it has engaged Investor Cubed Inc. (“Investor Cubed”) and Proactive Investors (“Proactive”), to provide investor relations and shareholder communications services effective immediately. Both Investor Cubed and Proactive will focus on increasing investor awareness in their respective verticals, introducing Memex to its network of investment advisors, investment dealers, institutions and other financial professionals.

In connection with these engagements, Investor Cubed has been awarded a consulting contract for a term of fifteen months on a fee for services basis, $5,000 per month, and granted options to purchase 250,000 shares of Memex at a price of twenty cents per share. Proactive subscribed for $24,500 of the previously announced private placement at 14 cents per share and has been engaged for a term of one year on a contract of the same total value. The Investor Cubed options will vest quarterly in four batches of 62,500 each during the term of the contract starting September 19, 2014. The contract may be cancelled at the end of a quarter under certain conditions. Any options not vested will terminate upon the cancellation of the contract. The options are governed by the provisions of the Company’s stock option plan and the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange.

“As a new public company, we’re committed to building both our core business and our public company profile at the same time,” said David McPhail, CEO. “The simultaneous appointment of Investor Cubed and Proactive enables us to reach investors, brokers, dealers and institutional investors succinctly, globally. Whereas Investor Cubed is well positioned in Canada, Proactive gets us into New York, London and Frankfurt, Sydney and SE Asia. Our product, MERLIN, sells and markets globally. Now we are marketing our stock globally,” he said.

“We are very pleased to be working with ‘OEE’ as they represent the best of manufacturing productivity in the machine to management (M2M) industrial Internet space,” said Neil Simon, Investor Cubed’s CEO. “This company is a unique opportunity for investors in the small cap sector who are interested in the Industrial Internet and its application within manufacturing. I see the company becoming the RedHat of the Industrial Internet,” he said.

“I find OEE to be an interesting company,” said Ian McLelland, President, Proactive Investors. “It’s interesting because they use the Internet securely to show manufacturers how to make more production and profit with the same labor and equipment. For example, Mazak, North America’s largest machine tool builder based in Florence, KY, within an 800,000 square foot plant, published in the March online edition of Modern Machine Shop a 17% improvement in production equipment utilization after installing the company’s solution, MERLIN. That’s impressive. I believe my following in New York, London, Sydney and SE Asia will understand that value,” he said.

About Investor Cubed Inc.

Investor Cubed provides specialized consulting services to a select group of leading emerging and mid-capitalization companies, with an objective of taking our clients to the next level. Investor Cubed assists these companies in gaining exposure to an established national network of financial industry professionals. This broad network includes investment advisors, bank owned investment dealers and leading independent financial firms. In addition, Investor Cubed provides traditional investor relations services including tailored national marketing and communications strategies. For more information, please visit: www.investor3.ca

About Proactive Investor Service

Proactive Investors is a leading multi-media news organization, investor portal and events management business with offices in New York, Sydney, Toronto, Frankfurt and London.

Proactive Investors operates five financial websites in four languages providing breaking news, comment and analysis on hundreds of listed companies across the globe daily. Proactive is one of the fastest growing financial media portals in the world. The group also operates hugely successful “investor forums” where three or four companies present to an audience of high net worth sophisticated investors, fund managers, hedge funds, private client brokers and analysts.

Globally, Proactive traffic continues to race ahead as private and professional investors continue to rank the group as one of the leading free sources of breaking news, in-depth comment and analysis and CEO interviews on companies listed on stock exchanges across the globe. In March 2010, total visitors to Proactive Investors websites eclipsed 1 million. Proactive provides content to many of the world’s largest news amalgamators, financial websites, and news tracking services, and also provides commentary to dozens of other leading specialist investor focused websites. For more information, please visit: www.proactiveinvestors.com

About Memex Automation Inc.

Memex Automation (TSX VENTURE: OEE) is the leader of the measurement of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (“OEE”) in real-time. OEE is the measurement of plant-wide capacity utilization. MERLIN (Manufacturing Enterprise Real-time Lean Information Network) generates OEE enterprise-wide, machine by machine. Frost & Sullivan awarded MERLIN its 2013 Technology Innovation Leadership Award. In 2013, Microsoft picked MERLIN to be its mid-market ERP machine connectivity solution. Mazak, North America’s largest original equipment manufacturer of machine tools, purchased MERLIN to manage its plant and now offers it on its price list.
For more information, please visit: www.memex.ca

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

Contact Information

For further information please contact:

Memex Automation Inc.
Thomas Smeenk
Telephone: 905-536-3138
Email: Thomas.Smeenk@Memex.ca
www.memex.ca

Investor Cubed Inc.
Neil Simon
Telephone: 647-258-3311
Email: Nsimon@investor3.ca
www.investor3.ca

Proactive Investors
Sam Kiri
Telephone: 647-342-2932
Email: sam@proactiveinvestors.com
www.proactiveinvestors.com

To see the full press release, please click here.

To go to Dave Edstrom’s blog, please click here.

Mazak and Memex Data Driven Manufacturing Article in Modern Machine Shop

March 22, 2014 – There is no better writer in manufacturing than Mark Albert of Modern Machine Shop and certainly no better MTConnect advocate.

Modern Machine Shop has an excellent article titled, Data-Driven Manufacturing Moves Ahead at Mazak”that discusses Mazak utilizing MTConnect at Mazak’s North American Headquarters and Technology Center in Florence, Ky.

This is a great quote in the article by Brian Papke, President of Mazak USA:  “This total embrace of MTConnect was intended to make a statement,” Mr. Papke says. “We wanted to be a leader in both promoting and implementing MTConnect. We wanted our example to show the country the importance of moving toward data-driven manufacturing. MTConnect is an essential part of what makes data-driven manufacturing possible.”

Every machine tool monitoring company went after this business that I can think of and Memex Automation ended up winning by a landslide.  Below is a snippet of the article that discusses our solutions at Memex, called MERLIN:

Since November, all of these machines have been connected to the machine monitoring system, which uses MERLIN MES monitoring software developed by Memex Automation (Burlington, Ontario). MERLIN (Manufacturing Execution Real-time Lean Information Network) is a manufacturing execution system and machine-to-machine communications platform. Memex has been providing network connectivity, DNC software and machine monitoring systems since 1992 and has offered MTConnect-compatible versions of its MERLIN machine monitoring and manufacturing execution systems since 2010.

Dave McPhail, President and Chairman of the Board for Memex Automation stated the value proposition below:

“Rather than offering an expensive, custom installation for every client, we’ve produced a packaged, machine-to-machine toolkit adaptable by all manufacturers. The technological breakthrough here is that MERLIN is an MTConnect-based hardware and software module that does not require programming or setting up of PLCs. The MES leverages a company’s existing investment in plant, equipment and enterprise software,” says David McPhail, president and CEO of Memex Automation.”

Neil Desrosiers of Mazak stated the history of the task force and why Memex’s MERLIN was selected:

“This supplier was selected after a task force headed by Neil Desrosiers, Mazak’s developer of digital solutions, evaluated numerous commercial monitoring systems. This task force included IT personnel, machine operators, shopfloor supervisors and managers from the machining department. Two factors tipped the choice to MERLIN. The most important of these was the apparent ease with which reports could be configured for various users within the company. The other was the ability to store collected data and archived reports locally on a dedicated network server rather than on remote storage accessible on the Internet (the “cloud”), a concession to security concerns raised by the IT team.”

Ben Schwawe, VP of Manufacturing at the Florence, KY Mazak facility stated:

“The machine monitoring system appears to be a good example of this sort of technology. In operation since November, the system has yielded significant benefits, initially by uncovering some easily fixed inefficiencies and practices. Mr. Schawe says that these fixes have increased uptime by 6.2 percent across the 15 machines that are fully integrated into the system. “This was that low-hanging fruit, so to speak,” he says. “We’ve also recognized some opportunities to make additional gains from efforts such as putting greater emphasis on having replacements for worn tools ready to go.” Taken together, these efforts have yielded a 17 percent improvement in utilization for the monitored machines so far.

But over and above these benefits is the advantage of having a system that takes the guesswork out of tracking machine utilization. “We can tell at a glance how we are doing, and the basis is in real-time data,” Mr. Schawe explains.”

This is a true inflection point in not only MTConnect, but in Mazak’s and Memex Automation’s history.

Thanks to Mark Albert for writing this fantastic article!

– Dave Edstrom

To go directly to Dave Edstrom’s blog, please click here.

Photons and Electrons

Photons and Electrons is Dave Edstrom’s personal blog about technology and some of his personal interests.

Dave is the CEO/CTO of Virtual Photons Electrons, and was most recently the President and Chairman of the Board for the MTConnect Institute from May 2010 to January 2014, as well as co-architect of MTInsight. Dave has now joined the senior management team at Memex Automation as the Chief Technology Officer and we are absolutely thrilled to have him on board.

Check out his blog at: http://photonsandelectrons.blogspot.ca/

 

Improving Your Manufacturing Capacity

Imagine improving your manufacturing capacity by 10 to 50 percent. Sounds almost too good to be true, doesn’t it? A lot of manufacturing companies think they’ve eked out every last ounce of capacity from their shop floor. Truth is, most have little or no understanding of how the equipment on the floor is truly functioning.

For a manufacturing business to be truly effective, they must be integrated “from the shop floor to the top floor.” In other words, they need to know as much about what is going on at the machine level as they do at the financial level.

If I were to take you on a tour of the business systems of a manufacturer who is fully integrated, here are a few of the things you’d see:

  • The transfer of production orders from the ERP system to the machine is streamlined and automated via an “electronic traveler” that sends results, including part counts, run times, down times with reason codes, and quality information, back to the ERP system.
  • Automated data collection directly from any and all types of machines via machine to machine connectivity tools, including emails, reporting and alerts.
  • Dashboard metrics provide instant visibility and machine alerts for the entire shop floor to see so that problems such as machine breakdown or parts rejection can be dealt with immediately.
  • Executives and shop floor managers can monitor and benchmark productivity KPIs in real-time.
  • Production orders flow seamlessly from the ERP system through to the machine or work center on the shop floor, and results are sent back to ERP in real-time.
  • Operations running smoothly with vertical and horizontal integration; vertically shop floor to top floor and horizontally throughout the complete plant so all production teams are informed.

The bottom line benefits are impressive. Rose Integration, a precision machining operation with 30 machines, increased overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) across the shop floor from 40 percent to 82 percent in just 18 months. Magellan, an aerospace manufacturer, increased their machining time by 100 hours per month per machine.

Memex believes so strongly in the benefits of shop floor to top floor integration that we’ve partnered with Microsoft to bring you the Dynamics AX Connector. This utility supports a bi-synchronous import and export of work orders and respective operational information between Microsoft’s Dynamic AX 2012 and the shop floor.

John Rattray, V.P., Memex Automation Inc.

Memex Automation, partners with Microsoft, were invited to be a guest blogger on their site Dynamics Cafe. Visit their site to see the guest blog.

Top 10 Reasons to Select an MES

In my last post, I talked about how a Manufacturing Execution System, or MES, can improve manufacturing capacity by 10 to 50 percent. That’s because most manufacturers, even those who think they run a pretty tight ship, don’t really know what is happening on the shop floor. An MES system provides them with objective, automated, evidence-based data collection that gives them real-time insight into shop floor metrics.

If you’re looking to add MES to your business systems, you need to do your homework. While a vendor may call their application MES or claim it has MES capabilities, not all applications are created equal. Here are the 10 questions to consider when evaluating MES applications.

1.  Does the MES system provide the right information in real-time to all key manufacturing stakeholders?

2.  Does the MES show the manufacturing decision-maker how the current conditions on the plant floor can be optimized to improve production output?

3.  Does the MES track a true Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) metric, or is it just reporting a machine-level utilization metric?

4.  Does the MES provide real-time feedback of requirement changes, helping to reduce process error and improve uptime?

5.  Can the vendor explain how their MES system can reduce waste, re-work and scrap, and how it will allow faster setup times?

6.  Will the MES system help to capture more accurate cost information, such as costs related to labor, scrap, downtime, and tooling?

7.  Can the MES access information and data across all types of machines and workstations on the shop floor, not just those that are PLC-controlled?

8.  Does the MES system link seamlessly to the business system? Does it provide for two-way bi-synchronous communication using an electronic traveler?

9.  Is the MES system scalable, and does it use advanced database tools for business intelligence reporting?

10.  Can the MES vendor demonstrate a direct benefit in ROI by improving manufacturing efficiency?

Increasing capacity utilization in a manufacturing plant is all about effective communications between the shop floor and the top floor, and this is where the MES system shines.  By monitoring all of a plant’s machines, not only will productivity and profitability be boosted, but the payback to the bottom line can be realized in just a matter of months.  In the long run, MES is a time-saving, money-generating solution that starts with an understanding of what is happening at the machine level.  Memex connects its MES package, MERLIN, directly from the shop floor to Microsoft’s Dynamic AX 2012 in a bi-synchronous communication of work orders and respective operational information.  To learn more, visit us at www.memex.ca.

John Rattray, V.P., Memex Automation Inc., jrattray@memex.ca