Textile Plant Loom Performance
BJM Controls embarked on its inaugural project, a downtime tracking system, for a textile plant in Edmonton, Alberta. The project involved 35 looms that produced bright, high-visibility yellow and orange banding used on workwear. The looms, which often automatically shut down due to detected yarn breaks, required constant monitoring by operators. Before the project, the only way to identify a non-operational loom was when an operator noticed it while passing by. Given that multiple operators are always moving around the plant and multiple looms can be down simultaneously due to various types of yarn breaks, this was a challenging task.
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For this project, BJM designed and built custom boards (edge devices) that are now connected to the yarn break contacts on each loom. The boards also measure each loom’s daily production. All this information is collected by the board and sent to the cloud via the plant’s wifi. Monitors displaying loom status on a dashboard (programmed by others) are installed throughout the plant.
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The benefits of this project are still unfolding, but the most notable to date is the insight it provides into the process. Operators can now see, at a glance, when and why a loom has shut down, enabling them to respond quickly when a loom goes down. In the event of multiple shutdowns, operators can prioritize which looms to attend to first based on the complexity of the yarn breaks. This allows them to quickly restart machines with simpler issues rather than waiting for a more time-consuming repair to be completed on another machine. This aspect alone has improved the plant’s downtime performance by 33%.
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The process of gathering insights will persist. Although the looms may appear identical, each one possesses its own unique characteristics. In the future, the plant intends to delve into their data to discern which looms exhibit superior performance and why certain looms process specific types of yarn more efficiently.
Yarn break detection system