Manufacturing
A manufacturing digital twin that tells you if Friday’s order ships.
Synopton builds a live 3D twin of your plant and connects it to the MES, the quality lab, the CMMS, energy meters, the order book and CCTV. Every stop, scrap rate and air leak sits on the machine that causes it, with a price attached.
Why the call-off comes up short
Component plants build to customer call-offs with fixed dates and penalties for a line stop.
The forecast says the order will be short, and the reason sits in three systems that never meet.
The MES logs changeover minutes at one weld cell. The quality lab logs porosity on one bracket. The CMMS shows a gas regulator six weeks past its service. On their own reports each looks minor. Joined on the cell that sets the pace of the line, they explain the whole shortfall, and the fix often costs less than one Saturday shift and a load of premium freight.
What the factory twin watches
Every signal is tied to a line, a cell, a machine or a part number.
The twin watches
- OEE at the constraint: availability, speed and first-pass yield
- Changeover minutes per shift, step by step
- Scrap by part, joined to the process variable behind it
- Vibration on presses and motors, with days to the trip level
- Compressed air and kWh per part, priced at the tariff
- Crossings, forklift lanes and weld-cell PPE on camera
Decisions it drives
- Whether this week’s call-off ships, and what closes the gap
- Which fix at the constraint pays back first
- When to book a bearing change inside the spare’s lead time
- Which energy losses to repair, with a payback
How it works in a factory
Read-only connections, a 3D model and a record of every decision.
- Connect. Read-only links to the MES and line historian, the quality lab and SPC, the CMMS and condition monitoring, energy sub-meters, the ERP order book and EDI call-offs, and CCTV.
- Model. A 3D twin built from the factory layout, line drawings and an asset list, or loaded from your CAD or BIM, with lines, cells and cameras placed where they really are.
- Label. Every figure carries a provenance chip (measured, modelled, published, assumed or forecast) and a Why? panel that shows its inputs.
- Ask. Plain questions such as “will we make Friday’s order?” come back with answers that cite the twin’s own data.
- Decide. Accepting a recommendation drafts a decision record with an owner and a deadline, and the twin then tracks the measured result.
See a factory twin running
Kestrel Components Plant 3, in the demo.
Kestrel Components Plant 3, a brake-components plant with four lines on three shifts, is fully built in the interactive demo. Orion Motors needs 7,100 caliper brackets by Friday 18:00. At today’s rate the plant makes 6,503: 597 short, with Line 2 at 61% OEE. Weld cell WC-2 is the constraint. Its changeovers take 41 minutes a shift, and KB-2207 porosity has climbed to 6.3% against 2% because the shielding-gas regulator drifted. Neither fix alone closes the gap. The twin prices an AED 145k quick-change kit and an AED 6k regulator together: OEE rises to 69%, Friday ships with 235 to spare and the plant gains about AED 3.1m a year.
IN THE DEMODemo names and figures are illustrative.
Questions buyers ask
Do we need a CAD or BIM model of the plant?
No. We build the 3D twin from the factory layout, line drawings and an asset list. If you have CAD, BIM, IFC or GLB models, we load them.
Does Synopton write to our MES, PLCs or ERP?
No. Connectors are read-only. Accepting a recommendation drafts a decision record for people to agree; nothing is written back to a machine, the MES or the ERP.
How are operators and camera footage handled?
Faces are blurred at source and never stored. Detectors flag situations, such as a blocked crossing or a person in a forklift lane, not people. Badge numbers are masked, and revealing one is written to the audit log.
How soon is the twin useful?
The twin is usable from week six of a 90-day pilot, and your team runs real decisions through it in weeks seven to twelve.
Other industries
The same platform runs twins of other assets that can’t stop.