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Memex at CMTS 2013 – Wrap up

Memex Automation attended CMTS 2013 at the International Center in Mississauga, ON.  We showcased MERLIN and had a demonstration of a working, full plant, MERLIN MES solution available, both at our booth and at the Mazak booth.  The trade show was very successful and garnered a lot of interest in MERLIN.

Thanks for all who came out and visited us at our booth!

Dave McPhail speaking about the Factory of the Future

Dave McPhail giving a presentation on MTConnect and MERLIN.

Memex Booth

Memex Booth

John Rattray and Wally Cassell at the Memex booth

MERLIN Dashboard

The MERLIN Dashboard on display

Memex Booth

The backdrop of the Memex booth – full of information!

CMTS 2013 – Mazak

October 1, 2013: The Factory of the Future Today.

The Factory of the Future is best described as an intelligent machine-to-machine and machine-to-management (M2M) two-way communication about how to make more production, and more Income From Operations, in the same work time.

The Factory of the Future is available Today and can be realized within existing plants, however, it requires manufacturers  to:

  1. Adopt open architecture of machine tools (MTConnect)
  2. Implement a backward compatible method to convert the machine tool into a two-way communication device that is capable of reporting capacity utilization in real-time (MERLIN)
  3. Integrate new equipment from OEMs of machine tools, like Mazak, that include the MTConnect option, to enable all equipment to “talk” the same language.

In August of 2013, Mazak adopted MERLIN operating on the MTConnect protocol to obtain the Factory of the Future Today.  David McPhail, President and CEO of Memex Automation Inc., describes in this presentation how manufacturers can obtain increased production and increased Income From Operations by transforming their investment in an existing plant (a 20th century investment), into an investment in a 21st century plant, with an overlay of MERLIN operating on the MTConnect protocol.

To open the presentation, please click on CMTS 2013 – Mazak Presentation, on the right hand side under “Downloads”

Memex at CMTS 2013

CMTS is Canada’s largest manufacturing event for buyers and sellers to come-together under one roof to evaluate new products and solutions and learn about hot topics currently impacting the industry.

Thousands of manufacturing professionals rely on this biennial event to assess potential suppliers, big and small, far and wide.  There are over 500 companies in manufacturing that are represented during all four days of this event, giving attending professionals an extensive reach, and allowing them to find solutions to improve and/or enhance their operations.

The hundreds of exhibitors that participate at CMTS meet a wide range of audiences in numerous industries.  From engineers to c-level decision makers, exhibiting companies look forward to CMTS to showcase the latest technologies and solutions in the machine tool, tooling, metal forming and fabricating, automation, design engineering and plant management segments.

When?

September 30 – October 3, 2013

September 30: 10AM – 5PM
October 1: 10AM – 5PM
October 2: 10AM – 8PM
October 3: 10AM – 4PM

Where?

The International Centre

6900 Airport Road
Mississauga, Ontario
Canada L4V 1E8

Memex will be at booth #7023 in Hall 3.

Memex Automation, the Frost & Sullivan award winner for Machine Monitoring Systems, will have a demonstration of a working, full plant, MERLIN MES solution available.

cmts2013 map2


Memex will also be showcasing a demo at Mazak, booth #4638, so be sure to check them out.

mazak cmts2013

Memex MERLIN Selected by Mazak

Burlington, Ontario Canada; Tuesday, August 27, 2013 – Mazak, the largest machine tool manufacturer in the world, has selected Memex MERLIN to be implemented at their world class manufacturing facility in Florence, KY, USA.

Following a thorough evaluation of vendors globally, Mazak issued Memex a purchase order to install the MERLIN solution throughout their plant.  MERLIN will be fully operational this fall and on display at Mazak’s Discover 2013, Technology and Education Event, beginning October 8th.

Memex Automation’s flagship product MERLIN is a Manufacturing Execution System application that tracks manufacturing operations bi-directionally from the ERP work order to each machine’s detailed operations.  MERLIN is able to connect to all machines on the shop floor using various protocols, MTConnect adapters or network connectivity devices. It measures capacity utilization and Overall Equipment Effectiveness metrics, and tracks up to the second detail about every event at a machine, all automatically.

“We continue to take a leadership position in propagating the MTConnect open protocol,” said Brian Papke, President of Mazak Corporation. “MTConnect’s value to our customers is in the ability for them to establish extensive and open channels of communication for plug-and-play interconnectivity between devices. MTConnect allows software to be universally applied between different types of machine models so that information is readily available for improving machine tool utilization. Using MERLIN’s capability, Mazak is taking another positive step in further increasing the productivity of our North American operations, ensuring the strong competitiveness of our Kentucky manufacturing.”

According to Neil Desrosiers, Mazak’s developer of digital solutions; “We want to demonstrate to our customers that they, too, can improve their productivity through MTConnect machine monitoring capability. Because when it comes to machine tool performance, you have to measure it before you can improve it.”

“Manufacturers today require both the adoption of new practices and new machining technology.  In order to improve productivity, the machines on the shop floor need to be analyzed continuously in an automated way”, said Memex President & CEO David McPhail.  “More and more companies are interested in enabling LEAN. If you can measure every state and event of the machine, then you have the evidenced-based data to effect change and improve efficiency of operations.” he said.

MERLIN utilizes the MTConnect protocol to communicate shop floor information to the top floor.  This MES solution will allow Mazak to monitor its manufacturing equipment in their award-winning plant and gather valuable data about their manufacturing operations. As well as keeping a historical record, MERLIN presents capacity utilization information in real-time in a format suitable fordisplay on large screens as well as on tablets and portable smart devices.

About Memex Automation Inc.

Memex MERLIN delivers overall equipment effectiveness (“OEE”) metrics in real-time, enabling manufacturers to increase production and increase income from operations profitably. Based in Burlington, Ontario, Memex, as a world leader in manufacturing connectivity solutions, offers Shop Floor to Top Floor Information in Real-Time and has sold a variety of connectivity products since 1992 to over 12,000 customers with 280 dealers, globally.  For more information, call 905.635.1540, email salesgroup@memex.ca, or visit http://www.memex.ca.

Memex MERLIN Wins Frost & Sullivan Award!

Memex Automation has just won the 2013 Technology Innovation Leadership award for Machine Monitoring Systems, as given by Frost & Sullivan, in an independent and comprehensive evaluation by their Best Practices Research group.

Memex MERLIN scored 9.4 out of 10 and was evaluated against a large well known enterprise MES supplier with a rating of 7.4 and others in the 6.4 range.  This shows that MERLIN is an enterprise class MES system.  With the recent endorsement from Microsoft as the MES solution of choice for discrete manufacturing, and with various machine tool builders adopting MERLIN in their technology centers, it is recognized as a very powerful solution.

MERLIN received a 10 out of 10 rating in the major categories of Impact on Customer Value, Uniqueness of the Technology and Relevance of the Innovation to the Industry, which shows that Memex indeed brings true manufacturing value to our customers.

The report’s conclusion states: “Frost & Sullivan is of the opinion that Memex Automation’s MERLIN solution is the best solution currently available on the market for the efficient management and monitoring of equipment efficiency in the manufacturing sector.”  And furthering customer value: “…equipping customers to best achieve their goals of reducing their operating costs by adopting standard M2M (Machine to Machine) communication protocols and thus passing on the savings to their customers.”

You may be interested to know that a comment in the report about why companies do not succeed with lean initiatives came down to 2 points; “There are two reasons for these failures:

  • Lack of seriousness in the adoption of lean methodologies and culture of the organization
  • Lack of efficient tools for aggregating and analyzing machine data, a process that is the heart of lean manufacturing implementation”

With an independent evaluation like this, Memex hopes that it will assist in your project comfort level to proceed.  If you and your team can accomplish the first point above, then Memex MERLIN can solve the second point.

If you would like a copy of the Frost & Sullivan report, please email us at sales@memex.ca. The award ceremony is being held in mid-September in San Jose, California.