Improving your business’s positive impact on the environment is an increasingly important corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative. In addition, it contributes to many areas of business success, from attracting investment and potential employees to lowering the cost of debt and equity.
An often overlooked element of business sustainability strategy is the role of service and support. As the world moves away from consumption and disposal to a focus on reusability and extending the life of products, we see this attitude mirrored in business technology investments and operations. So how can service and support help manufacturers take advantage of the benefits by extending the sustainability philosophy to their metrology operations?
Extend CMM lifecycle
Dedicated maintenance and servicing maximises your investment by keeping your coordinate measuring machine (CMM) in good working order for longer. It reduces the risk of measurement and accuracy issues/errors that could lead to scrap and reworking costs, wasting materials and energy. Establishing planned predictive and preventative activities helps minimise machine downtime and further drives sustainability; site visits and logistics can be consolidated by proactively anticipating issues, rather than rectifying problems on an ad hoc basis (for example, transporting spare parts over multiple journeys).
In addition, Hexagon’s engineers can often offer technical support and solve issues remotely, helping to save further time and increase sustainability through reduced travel. Timely support and consultancy can help reduce energy use by accelerating inspecting cycles and eliminating unnecessary measurement activities. By improving machine performance, confidence in quality operations is increased, helping to drive smarter and faster decision-making.
Hexagon’s hardware and software maintenance agreements are an easy way to ensure you receive technical support when you need it.
Drive asset productivity
Extending the CMM lifespan is made increasingly simple with the adoption of internet of things (IoT) technologies like HxGN SFx | Asset Management. But this tool pushes productivity even further by enabling smarter, more efficient use of your measuring systems.
HxGN SFx | Asset Management can aggregate data across multiple CMMs to give you insight into how machines are performing over a period over time. This data will allow you to be more proactive and efficient in identifying the need for maintenance, helping to reduce costs. In addition, you can use this increased visibility to identify in real-time where there is extra capacity in your fleet of CMMs, helping you optimise throughput and efficiency.
In short, HxGN SFx | Asset Management helps you to reduce the time, costs, and energy spent understanding machine performance and taking required actions, helping to streamline your approach to service and support.
Enhance CMM performance
Extending a CMM’s lifecycle will be more beneficial if the machine is able to utilise technological advancements over that time. An upgrade or retrofit is often the best way to keep up with evolving technology, potentially expanding the capabilities of your CMM with the latest software, CNC system, probes and sensors, and CMM interfacing tool.
By taking advantage of new features/functionality and product improvements, staying up-to-date with the latest software is key to enhancing processes and driving faster applications. Upgrading your CMM also enables your quality operations to benefit from technologies driving greater measuring automation. For example, you could achieve lights-out manufacturing by equipping your CMM with TEMPO, the automated part-loading system that enables interruption-free measurement of up to 100 kg-worth of parts. You can keep an eye on operations with PULSE, the CMM monitoring tool that allows you to run machines unattended with confidence; customised, real-time notifications delivered to smartphone, tablet, or desktop alert you to the status of your machine and of any important events in the environment that might affect results. By ensuring you can respond quickly to such potential problems, PULSE helps drive efficiency and sustainability by ensuring the machine isn’t wasting time and consuming power just to produce unusable data.
Ultimately, upgrading your CMM makes your inspection operations future-ready to take advantage of the productivity-enhancing technologies of today and tomorrow. As such, maintaining and improving rather than replacing your CMM can be an environmentally and economically sustainable option.
Visit our service and support pages to learn more about how our experts can help you drive business performance.
