1. Help Center
  2. FourJaw Beta
  3. Utilisation & Downtime API

Introduction & Use Cases of FourJaw’s REST API

This article provides examples of the benefits of using FourJaw's API and includes several real-world use cases from manufacturers already using the API.

How does the API enable me to get greater value from my data?

The utilisation & downtime API allows FourJaw customers to programmatically pull data from FourJaw. This enables integration with other systems and automated workflows.

Customers can marry up the information gathered by FourJaw with their other business data sets to give them a full picture of operational performance and conduct their own detailed analysis with always-up-to-date data.

Example: Management Reporting:

Pull in utilisation data and time in attendance data into a 3rd party reporting tool (PowerBI, Tableau) for management meetings, providing management with key production data to inform discussions to overcome challenges or maximise opportunities that may have previously gone unnoticed.

Example: Capacity Planning:

Get a true view of your capacity in real-time by pulling through utilised hours by week into a spreadsheet that is always up to date without any manual data input.

Example: Stakeholder Reporting:

Standardise and automate regular reporting across your business, so key stakeholders such as operations, planning and finance always get the information they need each day, without having to dig for it themselves. Our API allows you to use 3rd party tools to automate a daily summary that is sent out by email. Reducing manual data entry and keeping key stakeholders proactively informed.

Example: Digital Transformation Projects

As manufacturing becomes increasingly digital, there is a growing need to remove data silos from different systems and centralise that data in a single location. Often called a Data Warehouse or a Data Lake. By utilising FourJaw’s API, you can ensure productivity data is accessible to future digital initiatives, removing historic problems of siloed digital systems.  

How Manufacturers are using and benefiting from the API

Company: Specialist Metals Manufacturer
Data Connection:
Power BI

A specialist metals manufacturer for the aerospace sector has utilised our API to create a Power BI dashboard that is displayed next to each machining line on a large shopfloor screen dashboard.

They have also created a corresponding automated report that is sent to their senior management team each day.

Whereas before, performance data was back of mind, these dashboards and reports have provided visibility to both the factory floor and top floor. As a result, this business has seen a 15-percentage point increase in asset utilisation over the last 6 months.

Company: Specialist Metals Manufacturer
Data Connection: Power BI

A precision machining manufacturer who specialises in high-strength, high-performance alloys is using our API to connect the utilisation data they get from FourJaw to a sharable Power BI dashboard showing utilisation rates and goals, which is reviewed in leadership team meetings. They have continuous improvement targets to improve 5% per year in this report shows if they are on track or not with RAG colouring.

This has allowed them to quantify progress towards their yearly 5% improvement target and recognise where they are exceeding expectations, as well as intervening in areas where progress is slower than intended.

Overall this has been highly successful, with asset utilisation rates approaching double over the last 6 months.

Company: Precision Fabrication & Engineering
Data Connection:
Excel

A precision fabrication and engineering company for aerospace and defense wanted to get a better understanding of information held in their legacy ERP system. They could get timestamps of job start/end but had no way to understand what happened during problematic jobs.

Our API allowed them to find a simple solution. By creating an Excel spreadsheet, they now put the timestamps of the job into the spreadsheet and can pull down a summary of what the machine was doing at that time to understand and prevent repeat problems.

The primary benefit here is time saved – whenever a problematic job comes along, they now have a quick and easy tool to understand what has happened. Previously gathering this information would have taken several hours, or not been possible at all.

Secondarily, this manufacturer has found a light-touch way of marrying up their ERP data to their FourJaw factory floor data. Even though they are not in the position to do a full ERP integration, the API has enabled them to join up this data and get deeper insight to resolve production challenges.

Company: Plastics, uPVC and Composite Product Manufacturer
Data Connection:
Excel

A plastic extrusions, uPVC and composite door manufacturer has created a daily dashboard spreadsheet that pulls data from the FourJaw API. This is reviewed by the team leads each day and gives them an automated, standardised way to review production data.

The main benefit here is communication to the shop floor on performance – the team leads now have the numbers each day to celebrate wins and identify opportunities to improve. This has had a positive impact on morale and team cohesion and has supported a 1% (percentage points) per month improvement in asset utilisation rates.

Company: Luxury Brass Hardware
Data Connection:
Data Lake/Warehousing

A luxury brass hardware and accessories manufacturer with a reputation built on heritage and craftsmanship but has a dedicated Digital Transformation team is on a mission to remove data silos and connect data across their entire business. As a first step, they have used the API to establish a data warehouse that stores all their machine utilisation data gathered by FourJaw on a schedule.

By bringing in all their production data into one place, they have enabled joined-up decision making on continuous improvement projects, new hire decisions and capital investments. This has enabled them to remove capacity bottlenecks and deliver on a growing market demand. As a result, they have seen double-digit percentage growth in year on year in revenue.