Improved Operational Visibility for Textile Manufacturer

Stork Brothers of Huddersfield, now part of the Camira Group of companies, has 150 years history of manufacturing yarns for upholstery, hand knitting, hosiery as well as technical yarns for specialised use.

The company employs 75 people and operates 24 hour a day from their original mill building.  The layout of the building means that equipment is distributed across a number of rooms, making supervision difficult. PlantRun was chosen to initially monitor seventeen carding machines sited across six rooms. As well as the comprehensive range of reporting and analysis tools the PlantRun site overview display makes it easy to see the status of all machines at a glance from any PC. The system has since been expanded to also monitor fourteen spinning frames on site.

The system has helped to maximise machine utilisation with current, shift, daily and weekly utilisation targets that can be displayed on PC's and large screen displays. This informs staff of their performance, creates competition and can be linked to incentives when targets are achieved.

A major factor in selecting PlantRun was it's affordability requiring half the investment of a competing product ensuring a fast payback.