Matrix systems organize and maximize production and efficiency on the plant floor. That control results from integration of the following packages:

Quality of product, planning and decision-making are the result of Matrix’s manufacturing control:

Matrix’s hardware, firmware and software solutions have covered defect scanning, automatic inspecting, regulating and adjusting machine settings, product development, precision counters in production and output, and plant floor safety intervention. System packages have provided compliancy tracking, batching automation, computerized scaling systems, product quality consistency, and monitored flow of materials from receiving through production, and shipping and routing through orders received.

Interesting enough, it should be noted that repeatedly customers have given us feedback on our systems to the effect of, “The return on investment and increased profits have been tremendous, but you know what, with the reduction in chaos on the plant floor and the ability of employees to actually do their intended tasks, the reduction in personnel turnover has been dramatic!.” It is well known what hiring, training and rehiring can do to company bottom lines.

With major reductions in operators’ clerical work, they experience fewer interruptions, allowing increased production at the same workload and better quality of finished product. With downtime reduced to a minimum, production can only increase further. Management can look forward, as well, to less headaches, freeing up time for more productive planning, forecasting and better decision-making. Management productivity will expand further as they can now look forward to total plant control as scheduling becomes automated, warehouses are fully monitored, preventive schedules are set and maximized with diagnostics, and reporting and analysis become available from anywhere on the globe.

With employee tasks more targeted, plant environments settled, improved and consistent product quality and your customers fully satisfied; quality control becomes complete.

System Specifics

Matrix’s hardware, firmware and software packages have enabled industries across the board to realize significant additional annual profits. The Food, Bakery and Beverage Industry can expect the PRIMS component of the PlantQuest-LT system to provide total ingredient, production and recipe control on the manufacturing plant floor. With PRIMS, be prepared for total FDA reviewed lot tracking (see Bioterrorism), the elimination of operator errors and the ability to receive a perfect batch every time. How does the ability to create formulations and schedules for mixers, and the ability to send them to the ingredient system PLCs sound? Even the batching is automated, and scaling deviations and ingredient usages are recorded. Computerized scaling systems are integrated with PRIMS, and allow the operator to perform within allowable tolerances. The mentality of “over scaling is better than under scaling” is eliminated. Historically, over-scaling has been found to be as much as 5%, leaving the PRIMS system to provide rapid R.O.I.s. Those calculations do not even include PRIMS abilities to provide perfect recipe consistency. Phase two of the PlantQuest-LT triad, integrates our Automated Production Scheduling with the PRIMS system. This combination ensures that production is on time, allowing orders and delivery to be on time. Phase three of PlantQuest-LT, Business and Production Intelligence, completes the package, and brings production control full circle.

Business Intelligence introduces the term Dashboard, a technology allowing on-line reporting with the ability to drill down into the details on any given report, and export the information to other applications such as Excel. The package goes beyond historical data analysis (information from today and yesterday), and takes you to tomorrow, allowing business simulations to be created from your company’s history. Business Intelligence coupled with Automated Scheduling frees up management and operators from time consuming tasks, allowing them to become more focused on quality and production control, and the ability to track more accurately.

Matrix Controls looks forward to providing the Textile and Hosiery Industry with total quality, tracking and production management control. Matrix engineers succeeded in the Circular Knitting Industry with real-time KnitQuest, a powerful combination of Knit Monitoring (MKMS), Automated Production Scheduling, and Business and Production Intelligence. Our knit monitoring component is defined as MKMS, the Matrix Knit Monitoring and Management System. Infrared Defect Scanning and Controlled Yarn Rate Monitoring, communicate with our terminally mounted F-1000 Monitor/Controllers. Extensive data is collected and analyzed, providing you with real-time displays of efficiencies across the entire plant floor. The result is impeccable fabric quality, with savings spanning seven distinct categories. Phase two of the KnitQuest triad, integrates our Automated Production Scheduling with Matrix’s MKMS. Unique to KnitQuest and the Textile Industry, is the ability of this combination to avert knitting production from a machine experiencing delay, and automatically detouring production to output on a machine in current production, or necessitating activation of a machine currently not in use. With the addition of Business and Production Intelligence your company is freed from tedious data entry, analysis and paperwork, allowing more quality time, which always leads to higher quality of product.

Matrix has excelled in the Apparel Industry as well, and has found success in the Sewing and the Garment Industries. Matrix Controls succeeded in real-time total sewing control with SewQuest, a powerful combination of Shop Floor Control and Automated Production Scheduling. Real-time shop floor control allows data collection subsystems to record work in progress, preventive maintenance via repair histories, quality of product, control, and operator efficiency, production status, attendance and hours paid. Integrated with flexible-automated scheduling, plant management will now be able to overcome unachievable delivery dates, raw material quality variances, machine breakdowns, operator inefficiencies, bottlenecks in the process chains and delays in the supply chain. The intentions of SewQuest are to:

• Meet- customer order due dates;
• Maximize- utilization of labor, materials and machines;
• Minimize- idle time, overtime, step delays, lead/queue time, time in the system and WIP (Work in Process);
• Control- historical and current operator and machine data and efficiencies.

With major reductions in operators’ clerical work, they experience fewer interruptions, allowing increased garment production at the same workload and better quality. Management can look forward as well to less headaches, freeing up time for more productive planning and forecasting.

Total Garment Control is accomplished with our GarmentQuest package. GarmentQuest was created to provide total apparel solutions. The design and implementation has been very successful. Real-time total apparel control is accomplished through a combination of Transactional Core Solutions and Business/Production Intelligence. Core Solutions provide separate, yet totally integrated modules for Production, Production Design Management (PDM), Forecasting and Inventory, Warehousing, Order Processing, Allocation and Sales, Shipping, Accounting, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and System Administration. GarmentQuest goes one step further and integrates Business/Production Intelligence into the system, and introduces the term Dashboard. The latter, a technology that allows on-line reporting and the ability to drill down into the details on any given report, and export information to other applications such as Excel or multiple formats: XML, HTML or CSV. The custom design capabilities for the Dashboard allow the technology to be flexible and adaptable. The package goes beyond historical data information (analysis from today and yesterday), and takes you to tomorrow, allowing business simulations to be created from your company’s history.

The Commercial Printing and Screen Print and Embroidery industries are enjoying significant increasing annual profits with our PrintQuest and ScreenQuest packages. Matrix Controls developed these packages to allow these industries a computerized tool to replace tedious and static spreadsheets, and provide integrated, easy-to-use, automated drag and drop Gantt-based production scheduling, real-time updating and to provide production visibility for quick expediting and customer service. An automated data collection system was combined with automated scheduling, and topped with business intelligence to fulfill these tasks.

The Automated Data Collection System provides multi-lingual touch screen terminals to alert and queue operators to production orders, standard operating procedures, inventory alerts and special instructions. The touch screen terminals are also used to start and stop production orders, change crews, declare machine stop information and directly advise the schedule that a downtime event occurred, type of event and length of the downtime event so that the production order schedule can be automatically adjusted.

Collection is coupled with automated scheduling, and linked directly to touch screen floor terminals and machine interfaces to provide near real time update of in process production and provides set-up time, order run-time, downtime information, and reports “critical events”, product, operator, machine, shift and plant efficiency to an Internet accessible dashboard.

The addition of Business Intelligence allows for Internet dashboard reporting for the current schedule by machine, customer order status, production order status, operator and machine efficiency, downtime reporting, quality control, and work in process quantities by order or design, are available.

The triad offers Printers and Embroiderers total floor and management control.

Matrix production monitoring and tracking will provide for rapid returns on investment and significant bottom line additions. It is savings such as these that have motivated Matrix management and design engineers to provide products that will continually give you the competitive edge and beyond. Please contact Matrix Controls with any questions (Contact Us), or feel free to fill out a Needs Analysis Form (your Industry), where we can further provide solutions for your company. Free PDF Downloads available upon registration, as well.

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