For better usability some small modifications have been made to the PC-Topp.NET reports.

Easier Access to Personalized Reports

Besides the standard PC-Topp reports, the PC-Topp.NET Statistics page now shows all your personalized reports, too. At the bottom of the toolbox you will find a new section “Personalized” containing your customized reports.

Send Reports by E-Mail

If you need a PC-Topp.NET report outside of PC-Topp or on a different computer you can now easily e-mail it to your own address right from the page that generates the report (instead of downloading it to the workstation’s hard drive).

On the Reports page, below the usual links for print-out or output as an Excel file, additionally a link saying “Send to (user name)” can now be displayed which sends the selected report to the address provided in your PC-Topp.NET user profile.

If you want to use this feature please contact us so we can configure it for you.

The PC‑Topp reporting module has been enhanced by a new functionality for group-wide reporting. The system now allows larger enterprises owning several plants, sometimes located in different countries, to analyze all their sites’ performance at a glance with PC-Topp’s group-wide reporting tool.

You can easily compare production key figures of all sites in an enterprise by e.g. grouping them by country and site, or you can create reports comparing the performance of either all conversion machines or similar machines across the group.

The only technical requirements for using group-wide reports are that the same version of PC‑Topp.NET and SQL Server must be installed at all sites as well as stable HTTP or TCP connections to allow access to all PC‑Topp service PCs within the group.

The scope of group-wide reports available under the Group-Wide Reporting license will be extended in the future. Customized reports can be created on demand; please contact us if you want a personalized group-wide report.

Currently available Group-Wide Reports

The PC-Topp statistics page now contains a new report called “Corrugator Production by Board Grade and Roll Size” in the section Corrugator > Production Statistics. This report gives you an overview of the corrugator production of the selected period by flute type, board grade and roll size. The production totals per board grade are broken down by roll size.

There are new options for configuring the Production Today section in My PC-Topp available that are interesting in plants with more than one corrugator. The configuration page (reachable via the Configuration link in the lower right of the Home page and the Corrugator menu page) lets you select whether the production figures should be displayed:

1. For Each Individual Corrugator
   One line per corrugator, new default setting.
2. Totaled for All Corrugators
   One line summing up all corrugators, old default setting.
3. For Each Individual Corrugator and Totaled for All Corrugators
   One line per corrugator plus one totals line.

Running the archiving procedure for PC-Topp statistics interferes with other PC-Topp modules accessing statistics. Most importantly, the archiving process impairs the PC-Topp.NET Machine Terminal functionality. Besides, when using the classical program for editing and printing production statistics PC-Topp users are forced to interrupt their work while archiving runs.

To avoid such disturbances a new automatic archiving mode has been implemented that can be configured in the PC-Topp Communications Control.

Statistics auto archiving can be set to run on a specific day of the week. Ideally you would configure the auto archiving procedure to run on days with minimum activity in the plant when nobody is disturbed by it.

(Consequently, in the classical program for editing and printing production statistics the PC-Topp users won’t be bothered by the blue info screen any more.)

The dialog for entering comments on articles available in the General Tab of the Machine Terminal has been enhanced to allow entering more than just article comments. It now offers the following options:

• Article Comment
  As before, comments are saved for the article in question and will be displayed at each run of this article.
• New: Production Comment
  Comments are saved in the statistics for this order and will be displayed in the shift report.
• New: Internal Complaints
  Internal complaint comments are saved in the statistics along with their complaint cause and will be displayed in the Internal Complaints report. (This comment type only is available if there is at least one internal complaint defined in the Downtime Causes page.)

The Article Performance Report which used to be available only for the conversion machines has now been released for the corrugator(s), too.

As its conversion machine counterpart, the report lists orders by article. It shows information on produced vs. waste quantity, production time, speed, and trim for the individual orders as well as the totals of the article they belong to. (Partial runs are greyed out.)

As of now PC-Topp lets you define default reasons for downtimes and waste. This feature prevents unaccounted-for downtimes and waste in the statistics. (You have to use the Detailed Waste functionality for this feature to be available for waste.)

In the Waste Reasons page and the Downtime Causes page there is a new option to mark the default reason in the detailed view of each waste reason resp. downtime cause. If this is checked the default reason is marked with an asterisk in the overview. Setting a default reason has the following effects:

• Default Waste Reason
  If Detailed Waste Entry is enabled and a default waste reason is defined PC-Topp automatically assigns this default waste reason for waste quantities below a certain customizable limit.
• Default Downtime Cause
  All downtimes the user doesn’t specify a cause for are automatically assigned the default downtime cause.

In the Plant Summary the performance column of the machines can now be switched to displaying the number of quality checks run during the respective shifts (total number of quality checks as well as number of failed and expired quality checks).

Besides an icon in the upper right corner of the machine boxes indicates if there have been any overly long set-ups or downtimes. A tooltip informs on the details.

The Statistics section in PC-Topp.NET has been thoroughly revised and reorganised to make the PC-Topp reports more accessible. At the core of new structure is the new Statistics page which presents all production reports available in PC-Topp in a clearly organised list view.

In this list view, thumbnails and short descriptions let you easily identify any report. If a report is available as a modern PDF Crystal report as well as in classical form the classical version appears to the right of the PDF report.

For quick access to your favorite reports you can mark any report so it appears in the My Reports & Frequently Used Reports section in the top of the Toolbox where the reports you use most are shown as well. A quick selection feature offers one-click access to reports covering typical periods like the last week or month.

For better overview, the reports are grouped by the following categories:

• Plant lists all reports containing data of corrugator and conversion machines,
• Corrugator is for corrugator specific reports,
• Conversion is for conversion specific reports.

These categories are further subdivided into gruops like Shift Reports, Production Summaries, Performance etc. to make it easier to find individual reports.

The last category Others contains reports on order backlog and material requirements.

PC-Topp.NET offers several new tools for measuring efficiency in production based on the concept of Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE). OEE is commonly used as a key performance indicator in industrial manufacturing processes. 

Overall Equipment Efficiency

OEE essentially is the ratio of actual productive time to planned production time.
It is calculated as the product of

•  Availability
  Takes into account downtime loss. Calculated as the ratio of run hours to work hours.
• Performance
  Takes into account speed loss. Calculated as the ratio of actual run speed to target speed.
• Quality
  Takes into account quality loss. Calculated as the ratio of good produced quantity to total produced quantity. 

The OEE indicator offers an excellent way to monitor and improve the efficiency of your manufacturing process. (For more details on OEE please see http://www.oee.com) 

PC-Topp.NET Overall Equipment Efficiency Reports

There are two new reports available in the PC-Topp.NET Statistics which let you quickly assess the productivity of your corrugator and your conversion machines respectively.

They offer production and performance figures for each day, week or month of the selected period, plus totals, and an OEE evaluation.

Additionally, the Overall Efficiency Report for the conversion machines contains charts that let you evaluate each of the individual OEE factors and the overall OEE at a glance.

OEE Indicators in the Small Plant Overview 

The small Plant overview in the My PC-Topp area on the main menu page now includes a new view (no. 6) providing quick access to the OEE values of the current shift for all your machines.

The Plant Performance Report gives a comprehensive overview of production key figures for all machines including the corrugator(s) within a selectable period. As of now the Plant Performance page generates the report as a PDF file embedded in the page. This makes the report easier to use outside of PC-Topp (e.g. for print-out or emailing).

Waste at the machine occurs in three distinct locations:

• Before the machine
• During set-up
• During production

Waste entry in the PC-Topp Machine Terminal is done in separate fields to reflect those locations.

Those waste quantities can be further subdivided by defining detailed waste reasons in the PC-Topp Settings. An example would be:

In the Detailed Waste Report, the waste is then shown in detail, along with totals for each location.

If you have already been doing detailed waste entry using the old personalized module, please contact us so we can switch your plant to the new functionality.

A more detailed explanation how to enable and use the detailed waste reasons in PC-Topp.NET can be found here:

Detailed Waste Reasons in PC-Topp.NET

A new PC-Topp report is now available which lets you assess at a glance the quantity of finished goods and waste per order within a given period of time.

The report lists all orders produced within the selected date range and shows

• the number of ordered and scheduled products per order,
• the number of produced sheets vs. good sheets on the corrugator,
• the number of good products per order and machine along with the percentage of waste occurred on this machine,
• the total quantity and waste percentage for each order covering all machines it ran on,
• the totals for the selected time span.

The report allows you to quickly scan all orders produced and pinpoint orders with excessive waste, and then to analyze on what machine the waste occurred.

The downtime causes defined in PC-Topp have different effects on the calculation of times in the PC-Topp production statistics.

These effects are best explained by taking a look at the basic hierarchical concept for calculating production times in PC-Topp.

The following diagrams illustrate how the PC-Topp times are based on each other.

Focus on Stopped Time and Machine Productive Time

Here the PC-Topp times are visualized by stripping away one after the other of the different stopped times from the machine’s available time. The final result is the time during which the machine actually produces goods.

 Focus on Downtimes during Run and Set-Up

Downtimes can occur during set-up and run. Therefore in this diagram the Work Hours are divided into Run Hours and Set-Up Hours which are again subdivided into Net Set-Up and Run Hours vs. Down Hours during Set-Up and Run.

This is necessary to determine the time during which the machine actually runs without interruption by downtimes. Of course the Down Hours during Set-Up and Run equal the Down Hours in the above chart.

The above times are the basis for calculating speeds in PC‑Topp: The Run Hours can serve as a reference value for estimating the Planning Speed (used to compute how long an order will run). Speeds calculated using the Net Run Hours offer a guideline for a realistic machine Target Speed.

Board Grade and Trim Statistics

The Crystal report “Board Grade and Trim Statistics” lists production data on board grades by flute type. It shows production totals as well trim and average roll size within the selected date range for each grade, flute type, and roll size.

Separate summaries by flute type and roll size are additionally illustrated by pie charts.

The new report doesn’t show upgrade cost, like the classical report does. For analyzing upgrades, a new report will be available allowing more detailed analysis.

Corrugator Production by Day

This report shows production totals separate by shift for each day in the month (or other selected periods).

Corrugator Speed by Flute Type

The reports starts with a graphical view of day by day production speed for each flute type for a month, following by the underlying figures for each day.

Paper Requirements by Roll Size and Week

The new Crystal report “Paper Requirements by Roll Size and Week” substitutes the classical report “Paper Requirements by Weeks”. It calculates the amount of paper required to produce all orders remaining to be scheduled on the corrugator.

The Crystal paper requirements report offers more reliable forecasts because it takes into account paper consumption data of the past: The distribution of the required amount of a particular paper over the different roll sizes is now based on the data of the same week in the previous year, in order to correctly reflect seasonal influences. (If there is no data available for that week in the previous year, then the last three months are taken as calculation base.)

Paper Consumption by Roll Size

The second new Crystal report "Paper Consumption by Rollsize" takes the place of the classical "Paper Consumption List".

Like the classical report it lists the consumption figures during a selectable period of the past for all papers, as well as their distribution over the available roll sizes. What is new is the nicer and clearer layout plus the fact that, like all Crystal reports, the report can easily be emailed as it is provided as a PDF.

PC-Topp.NET now offers a growing number of reports in a new style, as Crystal reports. They take the place of existing classical reports, or offer new information, both in a modern and fresh design.

The new reports can be identified by a PDF icon in PC-Topp.NET. Clicking on such a link generates an Adobe Acrobat PDF document that appears on the screen almost instantly, no more long waits required. You can already find them in several PC Topp.NET pages, their cover settings, production reports and schedule printouts.

Many reports are not really needed on paper; the PDF format allows easy on-screen viewing, or to save the report to a file that can easily be emailed. If a printed report is required, the PDF can be sent to any local or network printer. Many reports can also be downloaded as Excel spreadsheets, for further analysis or external use of the data.

Great care has been taken to make the new reports compatible to the existing classical reports: They will contain the same data, and deliver identical results. Many reports will contain additional information compared to their ancestors, and all are presented in color, well structured and easy to read. Footnotes appear on many reports explaining values that are not instantly understood.

The scope of available reports will steadily grow in the near future. They will open up further valuable new sources of information for planning, production and management.

Production Targets are calculated as a snapshot of the current schedule situation at the exact (theoretical) moment of the shift change, they reflect what Planning had committed to deliver during the following shift.

The Production Targets page shows these targets along with the current production, showing at any time whether actual production is on target (100%), or above or below. The crews at the machines can use that indicator to see how they are doing, and starting out at 100% it should motivate them to stay at or above 100% even if the schedule changes during the shift. That way, the production totals at the end of the shift will more likely match the objectives.

As a new feature, the corrugator's production targets can be added to that page (which until now only showed the conversion machines' targets).

Shifts marked red in the Plant Summary and in the Shift Overview point out erroneous shift data. Even so, up to now clicking on such a red shift could lead to no faulty entries being displayed in the classical Production Statistics interface if the entry type concerned was being hidden at that moment.

Now all erroneous entries are displayed no matter if their type is set to "View" or not.

In order to have nice shift starting times in the statistics some users change the actual shift start to an even time (e.g. 4:52 to 5:00). If any events have occurred in the time span between real and made-up start time (e.g. a quality check at 4:56) they unintentionally get to be placed outside the shift.

PC-Topp reacts to this by creating an extra pseudo shift with normal shift length which contains these lost events. As this pseudo shift totally falsifies the working time of the day concerned it must be corrected by all means.

To make sure that you notice those pseudo shifts they are now highlighted in the Shift Overview page by displaying them in brackets.

• Area produced (in m²)
• Lineal meters produced (in m)
• Production time (in h)

The "Entire Day" section affords a quick overview of the production results achieved so far. It can be displayed or hidden according to the users' needs.

Key Figures for All Machines on One Screen

The one box per machine layout allows presenting a large amount of data in a concentrated yet clearly organized way which makes it easy to quickly scan the page. Each machine box contains the following information:

• Current Job
  For both the corrugator and the conversion machines a color-coded excerpt from the production plan is shown. The jobs displayed are the current one along with the last finished and the next to come. For the conversion machines start time, order number, customer name and scheduled quantity are displayed, for the corrugator(s) start time, program number, board grade, roll size and scheduled meters.
• Shift Data
  Up to three shifts per machine can be displayed. You see the shift date and code plus information on performance, average speed and total produced quantity.
• Progress of Current Job
  The foot of the machine box contains the data from view 2 of the small Plant Overview (on the PC-Topp.NET menu pages), i.e. produced quantity, scheduled quantity and machine speed, plus a convenient addition: The speed graph icon takes you to the performance diagrams for the machine.

Convenient Access to Statistics Data by Machine

The shifts displayed in the machine boxes are underlined - they link to the DOS program "Edit Production Statistics" for this machine which starts with the correct shift already selected. This way, you have easy access to the shift data for modifying (reserved for planners, supervisors, and administrators; all other users get a read-only version).

Moreover, shift date and shift code turn red if something is wrong with the statistics data of the displayed shift, e.g. overlapping corrugator runs, orders and downtimes starting or ending between shifts, or shifts lacking a shift code. Thanks to the highlighting you can easily determine exactly where the error occurred.

Direct Access to All Shifts on Selected Machine

Another useful feature is provided by the underlined caption "Shift" in the machine's shift header: A click on it displays an overview of all available shifts on the selected machine. By clicking on the desired shift, you can call up the shift data. Planners, supervisors, and administrators can view and modify them; all other users have read-only access.

Here, too, a red shift signals erroneous shift data. From here, you can navigate to earlier months or different machines via the toolbox.

Decide for Yourself Which Machines to Display

The toolbox of the Plant Summary allows toggling between displaying all machines (default setting) and the so called "Main Machines". This is a group of machines that can be freely configured and adapted to user needs by administrators via the toolbox link "Edit Machine Table".