Extracting Productivity For Oil & Gas Equipment Manufacturers

FourJaw's machine monitoring software is used by manufacturers who produce equipment for the Oil & Gas sector. Our software enables their shop floors to run efficiently and at capacity, ensuring they can focus their attention on the meticulous attention to detail and product quality expected from their customers.

Oil & Gas equipment manufactured by KSW Engineering

Strike efficiency on your production line 

Whether you're producing wellhead equipment or drilling parts, the attention to detail required to ensure the highest levels of quality and precision is critical to your success. Behind these processes are people working effortlessly to ensure you deliver for your customers.

And behind the people are the machines. The likelihood is that you'll be running various CNC machines that will be 'busy' cutting, turning and milling to make your finished products, but could you confidently answer the questions:

  • How productive are your machines?
  • Is your production line running at optimal capacity?

FourJaw machine monitoring can give you the answers and more. 

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Drive Productivity Gain Capacity Grow Profitability

Plug & Play machine monitoring software is opening up a new world of manufacturing possibilities.

What was once impossible, is now possible thanks to smart, connected technology. Discover how FourJaw machine monitoring could transform your factory floor by unlocking productivity & capacity, improving communication and culture and empowering decision making. 

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Machining Oil & Gas equipment

Machine monitoring for oil and gas equipment manufacturers delivers a 12 per cent uplift in utilisation

Discover how, after just two days of installing FourJaw machine monitoring software, this Oil & Gas equipment manufacturer saw night-shift productivity, go from 34 per cent on day one to 47 per cent on day two and constant from that day onward.

"Fourjaw is giving us the ability to see areas of downtime that in the past we would have had to micromanage to discover".

 

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Let’s make your line more efficient.

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MachineLink IoT device for monitoring any automotive manufacturing machine

FourJaw Works On Any Manufacturing Machine

Regardless of age, brand or model.

HOW IT WORKS IN 3 SIMPLE STEPS*

1

Install Hardware

Simply supply power to the IoT device, then attach a sensor to your machine’s power cable.

2

Connect To WiFi

Connect the hardware to your shop-floor WiFi network.

3

Unlock Productivity

Login to the app and start identifying and eliminating inefficiencies.

*Self-installation takes around 10-20 minutes – no specialist experience required. ** Please note this can take much longer depending on the time from provisioning to installation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which machines in oil and gas equipment manufacturing use FourJaw?

FourJaw's machine monitoring solution is designed for use on all types of manufacturing equipment.

In oil and gas equipment manufacturing, our analytics software is frequently used with:

  • CNC Lathe
  • CNC Turning
  • CNC Milling
  • Drilling
  • Oxy-Fuel Cutting Machines
  • Laser Cutting
  • Waterjet Cutting
  • Plasma Cutting
  • Grinding
  • Inspection
  • Packaging
  • Weighing

Learn more about CNC machine monitoring with FourJaw.

How Can Machine Monitoring Improve Productivity & Machine Utilisation?

Machine monitoring provides manufacturers with full factory floor visibility of how well machines are being utilised, by showing the machine downtime and uptimes.

With the FourJaw machine monitoring platform, operatives can categorise the reasons for the downtimes so factory floor managers get a clear picture of how productive the machines are. Here's a useful case study that shows how a manufacturer improved their machine utilisation by 400%

Does FourJaw machine monitoring work on old machines?

Yes. Our machine monitoring platform was specifically designed to make machine monitoring accessible to manufacturers of all shapes and sizes, which of course meant we designed our platform to work with any type of machine, regardless of age, brand or model. So you can turn your 50-year-old machine into a 'smart machine', helping you to understand how productive your machines are. 

Can Machine monitoring help reduce energy usage?

Although not specifically designed to reduce energy usage, machine monitoring software can help factories reduce their energy usage indirectly and therefore become more efficient and sustainable. 

Because our machine monitoring software reports on your machine utilisation, by machine, cell or factory, the data allows you to see when a machine is being run but doesn't need to be, i.e. wasting energy. By identifying 'negative machine downtime' we have helped a number of manufacturers reduce their production costs, thanks to the data insight FourJaw machine monitoring provided. 

Is plug-and-play machine monitoring software expensive?

No. Unlike traditional machine monitoring solutions, we’ve designed our machine monitoring platform to be accessible Not only did we make it easy to install (minimising disruption to your shop floor) but we also made it affordable.

We offer monthly payment plans and there are no high upfront installation costs often associated with traditional machine monitoring solutions, thanks to its plug-and-play connectivity. Find out more about the pricing plans we offer here

What data does FourJaw machine monitoring capture?

Utilisation Data

FourJaw starts with utilisation data in it's simplest form. The specially designed MachineLink hardware is a combination of miniature computer and current clamps. These two current clamps are typically attached to the total power incomer of the machine and the main drive unit, for example a spindle motor of a CNC machine.

This raw data is recorded every second and sent to our secure Azure cloud platform. The data is then instantly built into chunks of running and not running data, typically over 20-second periods, which is then displayed and categorised throughout the FourJaw platform.

What this provides is a very accurate measure of when the productive part of the machine experiences load and when it does not. Applied to this data is FourJaw's Machine Learning program which automatically classifies the data into productive/active and idle/inactive time. This means warm up runs and free air cycles are classed as idle time in the case of a CNC machine as the machines is not in its productive state.

How does FourJaw capture Machine Downtime Data?

Downtime reasons are inputted by the operator of the machine via a tablet which is installed beside the operator.

Each tablet is paired with a machine via the same FourJaw portal running on a Chrome browser.

When the MachineLink hardware, detailed above, measures a set period of idle time a pop-up appears on the platform asking the user to log why the period of idle time has occurred, this can be inputted straight away, during the downtime or even post the downtime if required.

Does FourJaw machine monitoring platform capture work booking and job data?

Yes it does. 

Work order information can be inputted manually or directly imported from a .CSV file.

This data includes the WO number, operations, machine names, estimated job time and start dates.

As with all parts of the FourJaw platform, this data is combined with the downtime and utilisation data to provide meaningful and actionable insights into your production process.

I already monitor Work order times, Ops times and setup times, why is this different?

As a manufacturer, it's highly likely you'll already be monitoring Work order times, Ops times and setup times, of course, this is all useful, however, it does not give you the big picture.

For instance, it doesn't identify and inform you of what improvements can be made to improve shop floor productivity.

Machine monitoring differs because it will give you real-time, actionable shop floor data such as:

  • Top 5 downtimes, per factory, cell or machine
  • Pareto plots
  • Average setup time per part
  • Downtimes and machine active times per work order

This information can be used to take decisions based on fact and not opinion.