To deliver superior results in 2022, manufacturers must integrate their systems into a knowledgeable manufacturing environment. The time is right for companies to maximize the potential of their machines and devices on the plant floor to ensure optimum outcomes. This is ideal for end customers as well, who can now receive perfect parts on time, every time and will ultimately shed a positive light on the manufacturers themselves, who now produce parts that meet customer needs quickly and affordably.

For nearly three decades, Tutelar Technologies has been at the forefront of enabling this evolution for manufacturers with its state-of-the-art plant floor software Ujigami. The solution creates an AI-powered, fully integrated environment for the shop floor that connects all operators, machines and devices to ensure the right process is carried out every single time.

Supplanting People Power with Intelligent Systems
Today, manufacturers struggle most with human resource challenges—getting the appropriate people to work and finding the right skill base to ensure that their machines are running as effectively as possible. If manufacturers do not adapt to a new solution and continue to rely solely upon personnel capabilities alone, they are likely to fail.

To this end, Ujigami promises a feasible path forward. It can fully integrate with the entire manufacturing workflow, right from warehouse management all the way through production processes, packaging, and shipping, to empower teams and equipment to operate more effectively. The solution essentially communicates with every machine and device on the plant floor with an intelligent software interface, eliminating the need for skilled operators who must otherwise deal with the intricacies of optimization and simultaneously overseeing the entire manufacturing execution with minimal room for error.

Ujigami provides built-in knowledge that will establish new standards and best practices by controlling each operation, and monitoring and reporting plant KPIs, to translate that knowledge for each piece of equipment—from legacy machines all the way to the latest technology.

“Our software oversees a wide range of areas in manufacturing. Ujigami can receive data from machines, operators, and devices and send control feedback in real-time to optimize the output,” explains Edward Dickson, President and CEO of Tutelar Technologies.

Creating Real Value, One Process at a Time
When it comes to the actual production, Ujigami fulfills the needs of material receipts, storage, movement and handling, and input to the manufacturing line. The software also handles machine setup depending on the type of part to be produced, which is identified using barcodes, QR codes, or RFID.

The entire process is controlled to meet part specifications with in-depth mistake-proofing to prevent problems. The software also ensures master production scheduling, operation sequencing, and material availability at the right time in the right work cell.

By bringing advanced technology to the shopfloor, Ujigami’s “operator-first” design ensures that every aspect of its operation simplifies work for the process engineers, supervisors, managers, and technicians. Ujigami’s real-time alerts and feedback signals to machines are rendered via a standardized server-based software architecture and design, which is familiar to IT teams. Moreover, as a browser-based solution, Ujigami delivers ubiquitous access to shopfloor data across geographies and devices.

Our software oversees a wide range of areas in manufacturing. Ujigami can receive data from machines, operators, and devices and send control feedback in real-time to optimize the output

Honing your Technical Edge with Advanced Manufacturing Capabilities
The range of Ujigami’s capabilities has gone a long way in supporting the world’s largest producer of outdoor power equipment engines—Briggs & Stratton. With 13 large facilities in the U.S. and eight more in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Mexico, and the Netherlands, the company was looking to reshore some of its overseas manufacturing units back to the U.S. In order to achieve that objective, Briggs & Stratton needed to shrink its supply chain to localize the manufacturing of its premium commercial engine. However, they realized they needed an advanced manufacturing solution to compete since the United States doesn’t have cheap labor. The company wanted a system that would drive for them, the three Ps of business success—people, process and product excellence.

They chose Ujigami as their intelligent manufacturing environment, and very quickly the software was able to deliver maximum performance in each of those three Ps. Briggs & Stratton relaunched their commercial engine in the United States and it was a huge success. The company exceeded ramp-up expectations and demand, and managed to deliver a product that exceeds their customers’ quality expectations and shrank the supply chain providing shorter lead-times to their customers. Briggs & Stratton is now able to provide engines to their customers on-demand, with features and options specific to each of their customer orders, and receive impressive results.

By using their advanced capabilities, Tutelar deploys Ujigami to drive increased transparency and traceability of production operations, quality improvements, minimize changeover time, and reduce time to production to effect lower inventory costs. They have also recently accelerated and elevated their technical capabilities by creating a zero defect vision camera solution using just a standard webcam.

The solution employs a very inexpensive device that can now be used as a technical mistake-proofing mechanism to ensure operators and equipment do not make mistakes at any turn, any time. The system can be applied in a variety of use cases, such as torque fastening, parts selection, and assembly processes - highlighting the advanced mistake-proofing that is possible by adding Ujigami to any device.

Creating Value in All Implementations—Success the Ujigami Way
Never one to rest on its laurels, the company continues to work with customers past and present to elevate the performance of their organizations. Tutelar is able to serve customers in 185 countries with support teams that understand local languages and cultures, which goes a long way in their mission of helping manufacturers enter the Industry 4.0 era. They are continually developing new features and new integrations that enable machines to talk to every single device available on the plant floor. By being a browser-based solution, customers have the ability to access and see the performance of their plant from anywhere in the world. Furthermore, it gives users tremendous transparency into the work going on the plant floor.

Needless to say, Tutelar is working toward enhancing Ujigami’s capabilities to provide an even richer experience to the end-users, so they can visualize their plant even more clearly than they have in the past. In that vein, Tutelar Technologies has added a more flexible management-level reporting system, where KPIs and standards can be defined. Ujigami now provides comparative reporting of production performances across multiple plants to the senior management, with an alert system to immediately notify of important events.

Ujigami has been a boon for all engineers, supervisors, managers, and executives, giving them peace of mind from the knowledge that it oversees, manages, and controls all things on the plant floor. Ujigami is cognizant of all changes that take place at the facility and will ensure operators and machines respond accordingly. “What we sell is peace of mind. Manufacturing can be a high stress environment, where managers worry about things going wrong. Ujigami removes the stress by seeing everything and controlling the results. The managers are assured no problems will arise.” Tutelar is proud of the fact that every time an organization implements Ujigami, it will quickly build faith in its capability and intelligence in making the right decisions all the time, something they continue to build on each day.