Factory Efficiency & Operational Improvements Payback Calculator For Advanced Manufacturing Operations
Create an application that can analyze factory efficiency and calculate the time for improvements identified to pay for themselves.
Case Study: U.S. Department of Energy contractor asked Intertech to refactor a tool that improves efficiency in advanced manufacturing and helps manufacturers decide which equipment upgrades to implement based on the time it will take for improvements to pay for themselves. Advanced manufacturing operations across the country will use this application to calculate pump, heating, fan, steam, and other efficiencies that impact their day-to-day operations.
Featured
Case-Study
Technology Used
Electron
Bootstrap
IndexedDb
Angular.io
D3.js
GitHub
Methodology
Agile / Scrum
Project
Efficiency & Improvement Payback Calculator for Manufacturing Facilities
Project Requirements
Intertech’s client had a contract from the Department of Energy to refactor a tool that improves efficiency in advanced manufacturing and helps manufacturers decide which equipment upgrades to implement. The current suite of tools dates back to the 1990s and is no longer supported.
While the client’s internal team includes knowledgeable engineers in the manufacturing field, their coding expertise was limited to a few staff and interns. The fundamental challenge of this project was transforming the engineers’ calculations and the functionality of the outdated software into a new interactive application. Manufacturers should be able to input information about their equipment and current resource usage. Then, based on a hypothetical upgrade of the manufacturer’s equipment, the application will provide data about increased efficiency and payback period to see a return on investment.
A secondary challenge was updating the client’s development methodology. To date, software projects they have completed for the Department of Energy have followed waterfall methodology. One of the additional reasons the client contacted Intertech was their interest in implementing agile scrum on this project but were unsure where to start. With Intertech specializing in Agile development, it was an opportunity that the client couldn’t pass up.
Result
As a federal contract project, one of the keys to success for the client was that the project is delivered on schedule and under budget. By implementing an agile methodology, Intertech was able to increase the cost-effectiveness of the development process while also being flexible in responding to feedback with frequent releases.
Intertech’s technology expertise also helped develop an all-in-one solution for the application that the client hadn’t considered. Bringing seven separate tools into a single application that can run seamlessly across platforms, online or offline, was a major success of this project.
Our Intertech consultants worked remotely from our offices in Minnesota, allowing the client to extend their software development team without the overhead of hiring and onboarding their own developers.
This open-source, integrated tool will be instrumental in helping the Department of Energy encourage manufacturers to upgrade their equipment.
More on the technology used during the project:
Electron was used to develop a cross-platform desktop application using web technologies. The web technologies used included Angular.io, Bootstrap v4, D3.js, and IndexedDb. A C++ library was used for data calculations and ported to the application as a Node Addon using Node-gyp.
The development team was organized in an Agile fashion, using pieces of the Scrum methodology. Intertech’s development team was completely remote. Slack and Bluejeans conference calling were integral parts of daily development. Additionally, since the project was open source, Github was used for version control, and Waffle.io was used for issue tracking.
Overview
During our initial conversations with the client, our Intertech consultants found that the outdated tools had been structured as separate applications for each system in the manufacturing process (e.g. heating, steam, fans, pumps, etc). Intertech proposed a new, integrated solution that brought these seven separate tools together into one application.
The application needed to be available on- and offline since many manufacturing facilities didn’t have consistent internet access. In addition, this tool would be used in sensitive manufacturing settings where data privacy would be critical.
As a result, our Intertech consultants decided to create the application as an Angular web app. For offline access, the app was saved locally and displayed via an Electron wrapper. This allows cross-platform support for Windows, Mac, and Linux, both online and offline, while only creating and maintaining a single code base.
In addition to serving as a technical advisor to make decisions about implementing the application, Intertech also provided coding expertise. Two Intertech consultants work on the project full time, leading the development effort and reviewing code from the client’s small team of programmers. Intertech also provided scrum training to help the client’s team learn and implement an agile methodology, making this one of the first agile-developed projects for the Department of Energy.
Intertech has been in business for nearly 30 years. Many of our projects are considered confidential by our clients. For this reason, and out of respect for our customer’s privacy, we do not mention companies by name regarding specific projects, with the clear understanding that the project outlined and presented is actual work Intertech and their consultants have completed successfully.
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