Video transcript:
Man-machine charts allow engineers to visually compare the time that multiple machines and operators are occupied and working. They can easily highlight areas of inefficiencies.
Proplanner's ProTime Estimation estimation generates man-machine charts based on time standards and processes that users established. I'll show you a very simple example to demonstrate the features of Proplanner's man-machine charts.
I have a study created and I have times assigned to each of my tasks. In this case, my times are estimated but they could be calculated or observed as well. Now I'll go to the tasks tab. Where I can see the same task bank and summaries of the time studies that I've performed.
The first step that's important to the man-machine charts is defining whether each task is categorized as manual, machine, or miscellaneous. I'll change a few of these, I'll set one to miscellaneous just to demonstrate how it appears on the chart and I'll change the process times to machine.
Next, we'll build a sequence for our process using the task bank. I'll double-click on the row header of the task I want to add to the sequence. So let me set something up here. I want to add several tasks to demonstrate and to make sure that we have enough to demonstrate what I want to show. Now if certain tasks are performed multiple times in a row we could set a frequency in this column. The next thing that's important is to define a resource that's going to perform each task.
Let's say I have one operator and that operator will perform all of the setups, load, unloads, and walks. So I'll define each of those and then I have a machine A that will perform process A in both of these cases and I'll have a machine B do process B and we have an operator here. Now I'll define which tasks are internal to one another, in other words, what tasks can be performed while other tasks are in process.
In my case, I can use the estimated time column as a reference but I know that the operator can walk, perform set up B, and then walk back to machine A all while process A is in progress. So since process A is on Row 3 I'm going to set the internal column of each of those tasks to 3. The same goes for a few processes down below, I can say that these are internal to this process A here. At this point, we can run the report.
So we'll select the main machine utilization report and you can choose which type of time study you want to use to generate the report and of course I'll use estimated that's where my times are coming from and then you can set the cycle time and the report will base its utilization calculations on either the total task time or another cycle time that you define. There are several pages of this report and the first thing I'll point out is that you can see in the header, the cycle time being used. The first few pages will be charts of individual resources, showing working time and idle time.
So we see the charts for each machine and they're processing an idle time and then we see the third resource, the operator, who has manual, miscellaneous, and idle times represented. Then we have the traditional man-machine chart. Which is in a Gantt chart format that demonstrates the working times of each resource and where each of those times line overlap. In this example, there's a large portion of the cycle time where one or more resources is sitting idle waiting for another process to be completed. Of course, an engineer designing an efficient machining operation would want to maximize the overlap and resource working times and minimize those idle times or where only one or two machines are running.
The last page of this report gives you calculations for each resource on working time, idle time, and utilization percentage. If certain colors have significance to your team your company, you can set the color for each of these categories. You can do this by going to the tools options menu and clicking on the Edit man-machine colors button and from here if I want to change the manual to another color I can choose from any of the windows system colors and they'll change another one get something different okay we'll save those changes.
The other key feature in ProTime's man-machine charts is that it is just as easy to create your second or third report as it is your first. It's very easy to make changes to your data and then see the new chart immediately. So let's say the standard times change for a few of the tasks and in addition let's say we need to add some additional processes to the operation. So I'm going to bring process C in and say that after process B begins, the operator will walk, and the load B will actually be the same, and the process you can begin. Go to find the resources and the same third machine is going to do that and this can be done at the same time as that process B is going on. Okay, now we can regenerate the report and see our new process.
Now, we see the new colors, we see the third machine the new resource, and we see the new overall process. So it really is that easy to generate a man-machine chart that's easy to analyze and also easy to modify as you make changes or propose changes to your overall operation.
