Definitions

Key terminology within TilliT

Assets

An Asset in TilliT is a digital representation of a physical thing that we want to control. In the context of production and supply chain management, an asset is anything used in the production process to create a finished product that has value to the organization.

This can include physical resources such as machinery, equipment, buildings, as well as intangible resources like sites and production lines.

An Asset may have multiple Orders in a given day.

Orders

A production order is a request or instruction to produce a specific quantity of a particular product or item. A production order typically includes details such as the product code, quantity, and due date, as well as any specifications or requirements for the product, such as size, colour, or packaging. These in TilliT are called Attributes.

A production order serves as the starting point for the production process, and typically triggers a series of activities, such as material procurement, resource scheduling, and production control

To complete an order, one must execute multiple activities.

Activities

An activity is a representation of something that someone needs to do at the right moment in the right place. It is represented as a digital form, but its content can be used as an instruction. Think digital and dynamic SOP.

In order to represent the workflow of activities required to run a factory, we represent each step as an "activity templates." These templates provide a standardized set of instructions that can be used as a starting point for creating new activities.

They define what makes up the "what" of the activity (i.e., what needs to be done), the "when" of the activity (i.e., when it needs to be done, at the start of the order, after a step is completed or once we receive an event from a machine), and the "where" of the activity (i.e., what context is this activity relevant, maybe only for this type of equipment, or if the product being made has this characteristic).

Events

Events are what trigger Activities in Tillit. There are different types of events that can be relevant to your production such as Equipment, Order, Activity or Shift. Events come preconfigured for convenience, however they can be easily customised for your needs.

Examples of Order Events are Order Started, Order Completed, Order Paused.

Examples of Equipment Events are Equipment Stopped. Equipment Started.

Custom events you may want to create for example can be End of CIP, 80% of the Order Completed.

Materials

Within this context, materials refer to the physical components needed to create manufactured products, as well as the resulting produced materials from a manufacturing process. TilliT provides tools for managing material information, including the inventory of raw materials, finished goods, intermediate materials, and consumables. These materials can be natural or synthetic and may include elements, minerals, chemicals, and other substances.

Attributes

An attribute is a characteristic or property of a data item or element, used to describe its state or value that store specific pieces of information. Data attributes can be of various data types, such as number, text, or booleans (true/false), and can be used to represent different aspects of an configuration, such as set points, customer, colour, etc.

Attributes can relate to an asset, order or material. TilliT uses a hierarchy to identify what attribute to use, this way you can maintain the same attribute (Max Temperature) in an asset, a material and an order. TilliT will always prioritise the value maintained in the Order, over the value in the material over the one in the asset. This allows to manage exceptions and tolerance deviation in a smart way.

Process Variables

Process variable is something being measured, so its a value taken at a given moment in time. We use process variables to give context to data being capture (i.e. you need to measure fill volume on 12 different samples. Fill Volume can be set as a process variable and consolidate all the 12 values captured).

Process value is how we manage Pass/Fail against tolerances.

Tolerance

TilliT can be used as a Quality Management solution. For this, managing tolerance is really important. TilliT has a way to use tolerance in a flexible way.

Tolerance is defined by a Process Variable, an Upper Limit, Lower Limit and Target. Tolerances can be maintained against an Asset if it's the same for all materials or on a Material level if different materials have different tolerances for a specific Process Variable.

Tolerances can also be the result of an evaluation. This is powerful since instead of maintaining hard-coded upper lower limits, you can maintain the rule the drove those upper/lower limits. (i.e. Product Weight setpoint +/- 10%)

OEE

OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) is a metric that measures the efficiency of production equipment or processes. It considers availability, performance, and quality to determine the effectiveness of production assets. A high OEE score indicates efficient production, while a low score shows areas for improvement. OEE is widely used in manufacturing to increase productivity and drive continuous improvement. See how OEE is calculated here.