Ampla Downtime enables plant managers to make continuous efficiency improvements by analyzing production downtime causes in real-time. This allows them to more effectively prioritize maintenance and improvement initiatives, as well as optimizing equipment parameters and operating procedures. In addition, Ampla Downtime performs the majority of the work automatically, freeing operators from time-consuming paperwork to focus on the plant itself. This reduces the costs, overheads, inaccuracies and errors associated with manual data entry, as well as providing the information in a more timely fashion to stakeholders.

By formalizing the categorization of causes and locations, reporting becomes more accurate and meaningful, especially on widely distributed systems where terminology can vary between locations. This allows production managers to evaluate disparate production locations using consistent measures across the entire operation.

By reporting on Scheduled and Unscheduled downtime events, as well as under-performing equipment, Ampla Downtime breaks down seemingly complex issues to common causes, enabling decision-makers to implement improvement initiatives based on known outcomes.

Downtime Analysis
Ampla Downtime connects to multiple HMI/SCADA systems as well as business databases to collect all of the information it needs to clearly and accurately identify both real and virtual downtime within the production facility. Downtime events are categorized according to the company‘s time-usage model (Availability, Reliability, Utilization, etc), cause and location. Other data can also be provided for clarity and search/filter criteria including free-format text explanations.

Operators and supervisors are alerted to downtime events via a system alert messenger to assist in the timely entry or confirmation of information. This ensures that the data stored is as accurate as possible, and has been reviewed by operations prior to being used for decision-making.

Downtimes can be split or merged to accommodate multiple causes for a single event. For example, an electrical fault could have stopped the plant, but a mechanical fault prevented it from starting again. Authorized personnel can also ‘confirm’ individual events to ensure no further changes are made to the recorded information without generating an audit trail of changes.

The Downtime client is delivered via the web and has full filter, search, reporting and diagnostics capabilities enabling even remote personnel to accurately diagnose problems and prioritize resolutions. The client tools provide high-level summary displays with full drill-down capabilities to the raw data beneath to clearly identify root causes of systemic problems. Navigation is achieved via an explorer tree that typically mimics the physical hierarchy of the plant. Data is ‘rolled up’ the hierarchy, so that higher levels aggregate the data stored in lower branches of the tree, making summary reporting a breeze. Crystal Reports is integrated into the client so that customized reports can be published remotely to the web browser, with full interactive capabilities to the navigation tree and filter options. This delivers a powerful method of production downtime analysis, with strong customization capabilities inside an easy-to-use interface.

Maximizing productivity
While Ampla Downtime provides plant-centric information to target uptime improvements and asset utilization, it becomes even more powerful when integrated with other Ampla modules (such as Metrics, Production and Quality), to deliver KPI metrics such as OEE which allows management to easily track the performance of the