ASI

ASI, a mid-market medical device manufacturer, faced growing pressure to provide customers with deeper visibility into production status across a wide variety of custom orders. Their shop floor relied on legacy controllers, each handling a single manufacturing operation in isolation, with no unified data layer connecting them. This fragmented architecture made it impossible to generate real-time, granular production reports — a significant liability in pharmaceuticals and medical device manufacturing, where traceability, scheduling accuracy, and regulatory documentation are competitive differentiators. Without consolidated data, operators had limited ability to anticipate bottlenecks or communicate order status proactively, eroding customer confidence and constraining growth.

ASI deployed Rockwell Automation's FactoryTalk platform to unify data collection and reporting across its manufacturing environment. FactoryTalk Historian SE was implemented to automatically capture production data from legacy controllers in real time, creating a continuous, structured record of operational activity without requiring controller replacement. FactoryTalk VantagePoint was layered on top to aggregate information from these disparate sources into a single reporting environment, giving operators and managers configurable dashboards for trend analysis and scheduling visibility. The integration bridged existing legacy infrastructure with modern manufacturing intelligence capabilities, avoiding a full system overhaul while delivering immediate data accessibility improvements.

The implementation delivered measurable improvements in both customer-facing and operational performance. Customers gained the ability to view the real-time status of their orders, directly improving satisfaction and trust in ASI's production process. Internally, operators adopted new reporting tools that enabled them to monitor production trends and predict scheduling conflicts before they escalated — reducing unplanned downtime. Key outcomes include:

• Real-time order visibility for customers across a wide range of custom manufacturing jobs
• Proactive scheduling enabled by trend-based operator reporting
• Reduced downtime through early identification of production anomalies
• Strengthened competitive positioning in the medical device market

• Legacy controller environments don't require full replacement — a data historian layer can unlock real-time visibility without disrupting existing infrastructure.
• In regulated industries like medical device manufacturing, granular production data serves dual purposes: operational efficiency and traceability for compliance.
• Customer-facing transparency (real-time order status) can be a meaningful differentiator when competitors still rely on manual reporting.
• Centralizing data from disparate sources before building reporting tools prevents siloed analytics and accelerates operator adoption.
• Start with data collection infrastructure before investing in analytics — reliable inputs are the foundation of useful outputs.