The Dashboard Is Covered Up

I drove my family to Florida over the holidays with the dashboard covered up. I had no idea how fast I was going. No idea how close I was to empty. No warning lights, nothing!

Crazy..... right? I know!

I didn’t actually, but that’s how we run many of our Forming machines. No equipment temps, gob temps and shape measurements, loading measurements. Nothing, just eye and feel.

Could I make that drive? Sure, but it would be stressful, inefficient and quite frankly, a little dangerous.

We measure everything up to the spout. Then the data disappears and we ask operators to run the most temperature sensitive, timing sensitive part of the process by feel.

Some leaders see forming tech as the dashboard.
Some see it as a fancy add-on to a machine that’s already struggling.

Excuse me?

At what point did the dashboard become optional?
When did visibility turn into a luxury?
Run your furnace without any temperature reading or cameras to see the batch line.

And how exactly are we supposed to get back to 90% efficiency after a job change when it depends on someone remembering where it was three months ago?
We are running a complex process on memory and reactability.
Not measurement and control.

So let me ask you this.
If the tools exist, and the process depends on them, why are we still choosing not to use them?

Most of us Forming guys don’t have a dashboard yet.
When ‘they’ finally realize we need one, the people who know what the lights mean will be gone.

So what’s the plan then?

Originally posted on LinkedIn. Join the conversation there.