Downtime Reason Timers

Most customers will want to break down the stopped time (or downtime) by reason. To achieve this they must have a means of entering these downtime reasons which can be achieved by barcode readers on each machine, or a PC in each cell.

To start with you must configure a message for each downtime reason in DNC-Max and a message to put the machine back into normal run mode. See Configuring Messages in DNC-Max where we setup two downtime messages - SETTING, INSPECTION and the normal run message OKTORUN.

Now we have to setup a timer for each downtime message. Each downtime timer starts when the barcode (SETTING, INSPECTION etc.) is scanned and runs until the OK to Run barcode is scanned.

Here is the timer for Setting:


The Start Condition is obvious - the timer starts when the operator scans the "Setting" barcode (and DNC-Max then generates the SETTING message).

The Stop Condition is not so obvious:

We want the timer to stop when the operator scans "Ok to Run" OR when he scans ANY other downtime reason because the machine can only be in one downtime state at a time. If you had another downtime reason called NOWORK you would need to add OR MSG[NOWORK] as well.

Click into the Stop Condition field, click the search icon , find the MSG[OKTORUN] message and click the Insert button to get the first part of the condition. Then click the OR button which inserts the OR condition. Finally find the MSG[INSPECTION] message, click the Insert button and then OK the box to add the condition.

The Clear Condition is set to TIME[ISDAYEND] to make sure that the machine is not still in Setting mode at the beginning of a new day. It is cleared for both live screen and graphs (Use "Clear Condition" on table/graphs).

The setup for Inspection is similar:


The Start Condition is MSG[INSPECTION] and the Stop Condition is MSG[OKTORUN] OR MSG[SETTING].

The Stop Condition for any downtime timer MUST include the Start Condition for all the other downtime timers. Otherwise you would have two timers running for different downtime reasons at the same time.