Fondital

At its 5 plants in Vobarno and Vestone, Fondital makes a wide range of heating systems, including die-cast aluminium alloy radiators, extruded aluminium alloy radiators, gas-fired radiators, and wall-hung and free-standing gas and oil-fired boilers.

Focus on process control and cost reduction in production and logistics processes is part of FONDITAL’s DNA. STAIN and FONDITAL have collaborated closely for many years now. The company today uses all the main modules in the STAIN+ suite, allowing full control of all production flows and company logistics, from the acceptance of raw materials to WIP management to storage and despatch of the finished product.

Adoption of the STAIN+ suite has achieved numerous results in terms of organisation, technology and – last but not least – cost saving. The main ones are listed below.

Production Control. PRD+ module

• Press and machining centre statuses available in real time on all company PCs, allowing immediate targeted interventions on the state of progress.

• Elimination of all transcription errors and omissions.

• Ease of use by all operators, with considerable time saving thanks to STAIN technology that uses the same  SIEMENS PLCs that control the machines, featuring keys and selectors, thus minimizing operator impact.

• Rapid production of reports and graphs for all departmental requirements.

• Integration with the management system for automatic updating of the state of progress of production and stocks.

• Accurate in-field identification of the causes of field rejects by cavity, article, press, operator, with graphs for monitoring trends following improvement actions.

• Real-time availability of the quantities of work in progress of each stage, allowing optimal scheduling and minimization of stocks of unfinished products.

• Minimization of press downtimes for corrective actions following accurate identification of the causes.

DIE management

• Complete electronic control of all die sheets, matrices and inserts, with automatic recording of the life and status of each tool, thus avoiding complicated and laborious paperwork.

• Tracking of all tooling in terms of location and order production / items produced by each tool, for constant monitoring of product quality.

• Full control of die and matrix maintenance activities.

• Management of rejects by tool/cavity.

Plant logistics management

• Automatic barcode identification of pallets of raw and finished products to eliminate hand-compiled tags and a provide a real-time inventory at each stage of the production, eliminating lengthy and laborious manual alignment operations.

• Product tracking stage by stage.

• Complete visibility to all authorized users of the status, location and quantity of stocks of each element.

• Real-time stock updating based on inward and outward movements.

• Warehouse management in cells to provide storemen with details of where to find the items required, thereby speeding up despatch preparation.

• Optimization of stock replenishment using algorithms that tell the storemen which cells need to be replenished based on the stock levels and article reordering indices.

• Automatic real-time updating of all data on the storemen’s handheld terminals.

• Close integration with the current management system.

• Analysis of performance indicators for the various warehouses, allowing continuous flow assessment and optimisation.

Process control

• Field acquisition of all the analogue and digital signals required for remote operation and supervision of the systems linked to the foundries and machining bays. The field and machine PLCs automatically acquire all the digital signals representing the status of the valves, motors and digital sensors, and all the analogue signals used to monitor plant management process parameters.

• Recording of trends in process parameters correlated with work in progress, allowing a detailed process analysis by machine, article and order, and continuous optimisation and verification of corrective actions performed.