AMS (Architectural & Metal Systems), a manufacturer of aluminium extrusion and façade systems, has achieved a 19% improvement in machine utilisation and identified annual efficiency and sustainability improvements worth more than €30,000 within three months of installing machine monitoring technology from FourJaw Manufacturing Analytics.

AMS, which employs more than 300 people at its 400,000 sq ft facility in Cork, introduced FourJaw’s plug-and-play machine monitoring system in December 2023 to measure machine utilisation and support its move to shift-based working patterns. AMS wanted to provide site managers with an objective view of production visibility during lights-out manufacturing and improve its ability to deliver products to customers within short lead times.

FourJaw’s platform, which AMS installed initially on several CNC machines, immediately provided reliable real-time data on machine utilisation, enhancing resource planning and enabling the manufacturer to identify areas for process improvements and cost reductions. Enhanced communication between managers and machine operators, and interventions inspired by analysis of downtime data, are enabling AMS to reduce time lost on each monitored machine by an average of 20 minutes per shift.

AMS is also improving machine utilisation levels, which ran at an average of 39.8% at the time of installing FourJaw, to 52.9% within three months. AMS calculates that these initial efficiency improvements are worth between €19,000 and €28,000 a year.

Analysis of energy consumption data recorded by FourJaw is also identifying opportunities to reduce energy use by as much as €8000 a year on some machines, as well as further savings worth €12,000 per annum by reducing energy wasted on machines that were not isolated correctly.

Chris Ryan, continuous improvement manager at AMS, says: “FourJaw was an easy investment to make and a giant leap forward in our digitisation journey.”

For more information www.fourjaw.com