+82%
useful welding time, from 115 to 210 hours per week
Success Story: De La Fontaine
How De La Fontaine unlocked the equivalent of $7,125/week in capacity without buying new machines
- Useful welding time went from 115 to 210 hours per week (+82%), on the same 5 machines
- About $7,125/week in freed capacity, without spending a penny more
- 2 operators reassigned to value-added tasks
- Pilot phase completed in 4 days, on 5 welding machines
By the numbers
The Results
~$7,125
in freed capacity each week, without buying new machines
2
operators reassigned to value-added tasks
How this number is calculated: producing these 95 additional useful hours any other way (new machine and operator) would have cost about $7,125/week, that is 95 h × about $75/h in full labor and machine cost. De La Fontaine obtained them without spending a penny more.
"Monitoring our machines allowed us to maintain our delivery times [...] which puts us in an extremely enviable position against the competition."
The client
Project Snapshot
- Company
- De La Fontaine, manufacturer of steel doors and frames, 201 to 500 employees, plants in Quebec and the United States.
- Solution
- The OEE solution, Intelligence Industrielle's industrial performance monitoring solution, installed on 5 welding machines.
- Value
- About $7,125/week in freed capacity and a planned rollout of 77 additional licenses.
The context
The Operational Challenge
To meet growing demand, De La Fontaine needed to increase its production capacity, without heavy investments in equipment. Referred to Intelligence Industrielle by a digital transformation coaching firm, following the success achieved at Infasco, the company first wanted to maximize the yield of its current fleet before spending, to stay competitive and meet its delivery deadlines.
On the floor
The Bottleneck
Despite its leadership position, the company was hitting a major obstacle: its welding machines were only running at 20 to 25% of their useful capacity. Without precise data, it was impossible to know why, and therefore impossible to fix. Management was flying blind, and every lost hour ate into the capacity to deliver on time. A reliable production monitoring system was needed.
20 to 25%of useful capacity only, before the project
The objective
Improve the real performance of the welding machines, their Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), by finding the true causes of slowdowns before spending on new machines.
Your plant
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TRG solution
The Deployed Solution
The OEE solution, Intelligence Industrielle's industrial performance monitoring solution, was installed on 5 welding machines. From the first days of the pilot, the team had real-time visibility into each machine's actual performance, enough to find the true causes of slowdowns and fix them before spending on new equipment.
- 01
OEE monitoring installed on the 5 pilot welding machines
- 02
Real-time visibility from the first days
- 03
The true causes of slowdowns identified
The rollout
Implementation and Adoption
Pilot phase: completed in 4 days, on 5 welding machines
Integration was fast: the pilot phase on the 5 welding machines was completed in 4 days. Two factors accelerated adoption: De La Fontaine's team already had a solid base (several machines had been connected before), and turnkey project management with weekly meetings guided every step. With the pilot quickly proving itself, the rollout continued by machine groups.
- 01
Pilot completed in 4 days on 5 welding machines
- 02
Rollout by machine groups
- 03
Toward 77 licenses in total
Common questions
Handling Objections
Fear of complexity on the floor
Complex multi-site rollout
Reliability of the numbers and proof of ROI
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