You’re an employee for just about any company. Right now, business is up and you’re working the first shift. You’ve been enjoying your new capabilities since Dream Report was installed. It’s making your life much easier by automating many mundane tasks, and you’re able to have greater visibility into your process and the items that’ll positively influence your job. So, here is what a typical day might look like:
BEEP – BEEP – BEEP, it’s 5:30 am. Your alarm just went off, and you’re one of the 75% of 25 to 29 year olds that sleep with their cell phone. So, you grab your phone and have a quick look at Facebook. Then, you start wondering what your day will be like and you click the Dream Report Web Portal button, log in and generate your Shift Summary report. You know it gets generated automatically for your 7:00am start and will be in your inbox when you get to work, but it never hurts to create an ad-hoc version to see where things are right now.
Yea, the report is shorter than usual. No major issues. You browse the past couple of shifts worth of alarms summarized out of your HMI/SCADA and see the usual offenders. That Air Compressor is tripping more than usual. You scroll down to the Maintenance section, pulled out of your EAM system, and you see that todays the day the vendor is scheduled to come in for repairs. That’s great news. Lunch with Bud!
Further down in the production section you see that they’ve run 15 batches. We usually get 20 (10 per shift). A quick look at KPIs and you see that the batch operations are all normal, but there’s a major gap in operations. What happened in production? Ah yes, you jump to the ERP section and see that one order was put on hold and you’ve had a change-over to a different product. That’ll do it!
Time for a shower!
It’s 6:55 am and you’re walking in the door. You’ve been wanting to check email on the drive in to confirm that Bud’s available for lunch. 77% of people think they can safely text and drive, and 34% actually do. But you know that’s not a good idea and it can wait. You get to your desk, sip a cup of coffee and Jake stops by. It’s the daily change-over meeting.
You both have your official shift change report. You’re looking at your Dream Report PDF on the monitor and Jake has his hardcopy which he has set to automatically print in the control room. You remind him that the average American uses 500lbs of paper a year. He reminds you that he is above average and gives you a grin.
Nothing’s changed since 5:30am. There’s one anomaly in the Lab Sample area that needs some discussion. Apparently the viscosities are a bit higher than usual and it’s worth checking if there’s a material issue, test procedure change or actual process shift. It might just be the new lab tech. Still well with-in range, but you see this report every day and know that the trend is a bit usual. Jake tells you the reason for the change-over. Your major competitor lost an account to your company due to both quality and price issues. You’ve got to fit in a rush production order to lock in the account and prove your agility. You’re thinking – Dream Report’s made a great impact in the past year. This might not have been possible last year.
This also happened last week and you quickly call up that report to have a look. We’re improving! Last week we sacrificed 6 batch runs for a changeover.
8:00am and you stop by the control room. You get the operators together and show them the new Dream Report integration with the HMI/SCADA system that you completed yesterday. You show them the buttons that will generate their Shift Summary and Batch Reports. They don’t have to leave the HMI screen any more. It’s pretty cool that Dream Report offers command line and Web Service parameters for report generation. There’s even an Active-X control for detailed interactions. You’re wondering – should I add these to the bosses screen?
9:56 am and you’re heading to a management meeting. You pass the lunch room and see the flat screen on the wall. Dream Report’s generating the corporate dashboard for all to see and updates it by the minute. The numbers are all good, colors are all right (No Red – yea!). Production is up and you might be in for a quarterly bonus if this keeps up.
Pointy Haired Boss shows up at 10:05. You’re feeling like Dilbert. Why can’t he ever be on time? Dream Report has everyone informed these days. Even the new guy has spotted some Dream Report variables that could be improved with a minor process tweak. The boss is looking good and today he decides to give you a Spot Award for your hard work. Awesome – lunch in on the house. You’re given the news that energy is the next focus. The boss wants to see Dream Report energy reports. Facility energy use by department. Major asset energy use. Energy use by batch. Shift to shift energy reports. Bar Charts comparing them to installed state and to each other. Make them look “Pretty” he says. Your thought “That’s a piece-of-cake with Dream Report – just can’t let him know how quickly and easily I can get this done. Poker face works – he gives a week – you need a day.”
12:00 pm and Bud shows up in your office. He’s just finished adding an enhancement to your air compressors. They’ve all been given secure web connections and are making their data available to the new AcmeCompressor Cloud Service. Bud says they’re now using Dream Report and will be delivering status “Reports as a Service – RaaS”. They checked the ICS-CERT database and saw that Dream Report was tested for Cyber Security. None of their other reporting options have that. They’ll be watching the compressor efficiencies remotely from now on as part of the annual agreement and will be delivering anomaly reports and monthly status reports. They’ll also have a Web Portal letting you log in to make notes and do some ad-hoc analysis of the data. You’re thinking – it’s about time they got with the program. You’ve been doing that for the past year. The talk switches to sports…
1:30 pm and you’re strolling into the sample lab. Burrrrr, a lot colder than usual. You open your Tablet and look at the Dream Report Portal. Pull up a report on the HVAC and see the temp had been lowered. That explains the viscosity changes. Let’s review the test procedure with the new lab tech and make sure he knows the test has to be performed at 68⁰F. In the corner of the room, you see the Dream Report web portal is up and the sample log appears to be up to date. Nothing to see here – move along.
2:00 pm and you’re walking past the backup generator. It’s looking a bit unkempt and the grounds crew should be trimming the weeds. A quick action with the tablet and the Dream Report web portal and you’ve entered a work order, set it to low priority, but assigned it to be done this week. You’ll see that show up on your morning status report till it’s done and can see who it’s assigned to. Seeing the generator reminds you to review the last few test cycles to make sure it’s operating correctly and you decide to do it on the spot. A couple of clicks and Dream Report called up the last 10 cycles and highlights any trends. All systems normal.
2:30 pm and it’s getting near the end of the day. You want to get your daily production reports done. Back at your desk, you run a shift production report. Yes, finishing the 10th batch and all KPIs look good. You log into your Dream Report Signing Portal to see the pending reports awaiting your Electronic Signature. Once that’s added, they’ll be processed and distributed. 9 batch reports waiting. #10 isn’t done yet. Oh yes, there’s another report, the monthly operating report for the EPA. It’s so nice that you don’t have to do those by hand any more. Entering data into Excel used to be so tedious. Now you can have Dream Report populate those standard State Excel forms automatically. You just have to review them and send them in.
2:45 pm and you’re daydreaming about all the things Dream Report is doing for you… Generating beautiful reports on anything you want. It used to be such a chore to get a report – having to work with IT was always such a hassle. A month or more wait for the simplest report. Now you can have all you want. You wonder how Dream Report can access all your data sources and pull data into one report, even performing calculations across different systems. It’s even grabbing data from Excel and CSV files, automatically. Those Ocean Data Systems’ engineers are pretty smart. That must be why Control Engineering recognized Dream Report with an “Engineers’ Choice Award”. Dream Report is emailing reports and sending them up to the Corporate Server via FTP. It’s even managing the reports, controlling its archives so they don’t get too big. Dream Report has sure proven itself and it’s time to install it at the other sites around the world. Better get the Passport renewed. Good thing Dream Report is available in 14 languages.
3:00 pm changeover meeting. Good news, Bob already reviewed his Dream Report and there’s nothing to talk about. He gives me a hard time about making the grounds crew trim the weeds. He always spots when you’re adding maintenance items to spruce up the place…
And you’re outa there.