Who would use it and why?
Managing the production floor on-the-go is what this app is for. For this end, site managers and managers of the production floor (including shift managers) will find this app very useful. They will see real-time data from the Matics system in various views: top down and bottom up. All the basic actions such as managing tasks and service calls, reporting stop events and more are supported in this production-floor digital assistant tool.
This app is an integral part of the Matics suite of smart connected applications that includes the core Web app and the Operator app.
Where do I find it?
Matics Manager is available for iOS and Android devices and can be downloaded from the App Store and Google Play respectively.
Setting it up
Install the app.
Open the app.
Tap + to log in to your factory.
If you manage multiple factories (multi-site), you'll add these factories after adding and logging in to the first factory.In the Add Factory dialog:
Enter the factory name
Enter the Matics factory URL.
Tap Next.
In the Log In dialog:
Enter your Matics username (or associated email).
Enter your Matics password.
Tap Log In.
The app will open to its home page.
If you are working in a multi-site setup and therefore have additional factories that should be included in the app in Android apps there will be a prompt if you want to add another factory. Otherwise, tap the menu control in the top-right part of the page and then:Tap Add Factory.
Repeat steps (a) and (b) above.
This will add the factory to the app.Repeat this step (c) for all other factories/sites you need to add to the app.
Walking through the app
Top-down & bottom-up views
The app follows a drill-down principle in which you start from the overall factory view and then continue to the layer in which all the factory's departments are presented, then you can examine in more detail each department and tap any of the department's machines to examine that machine in more depth.
The nature of mobile apps with their swipes and tapping makes it easy to quickly access production-floor information and perform various operations.
In this clip we walk through the three levels of information presented in the manager app: the high-level factories view, the department view and the machine view.
(This video does not include a production line department. Production lines will be covered in a separate video.)
To move the subtitles to a more convenient location, click them and drag.
Subtitles are currently available only in English.
Operations you can do through this app
The app's different views give you information of what's currently happening + there are enough options in the app for you to detect trends by comparing to past performance. So there's sufficient data for you to make informed decisions as to what actions to take.
We'll go over each of these actions in the following sections.
Actions you can do through the app are:
Activate jobs
End setup
Monitor, report and split stop events
Manage tasks
Manage service calls
Chat with operators by sending direct messages to machines
Manage notifications
Send screen captures of the app's analytics
Add notes to jobs
Activating jobs and ending setup via the Manager app
Activating a job signals to the Matics system to begin monitoring and recording the machine’s production activity. The system uses these data and the standards set in the job's recipe to calculate production efficiency and other KPIs. Activating a job automatically transitions the machine to setup state as it is common to calibrate, clean and make other adjustments to the machine prior production.
Setup time can be ended manually, or ended automatically after a number of cycles. Timely reporting of setup end ensures that the production timeline accurately reflects the machine's activity and the analytics derived from the logged activity are correct.
In this clip we walk through how to activate a job and end setup.
For information about how the job completion threshold is configured, see this article.
Monitoring stop events & reporting stop event reasons
You may want to start by reading what determines the auto-generation of stop events that flag time in which the machine isn’t working. Understanding why stop event reasons should be reported is no less important. In the following clip we go over the mechanics of reporting stop event reasons through the manager app, how to to split a logged stop event to reflect the different stop reasons its comprised of, and where in the app you can easily monitor stop events.