Homeyer Precision Manufacturing serves a range of industries including aerospace, defence, oil and gas, and energy production. The company is led by president Herb Homeyer, who is also chairman of the board of The National Tooling and Machining Association (NTMA). He founded his company in 1990 with a belief in the power of North American manufacturing and a commitment to bring a new level of service to his industry, describes Memex.“The Industrial Internet of Things, or IIoT, is a powerful trend, and MERLIN makes IIoT real by equipping industrial machines with the necessary interfaces for connecting, collecting, and analyzing manufacturing data in real-time,” said Homeyer. “Our manufacturing team did their homework before choosing MERLIN. One of the things that most impressed us is how no machine is left behind regardless of make or vintage, and MERLIN’s ability to implement quickly on our factory floor without costly integration services or associated time-lags. With this real-time visibility, we look forward to a significant boost in Overall Equipment Effectiveness, or OEE.”

“We are honoured to be implementing Memex’s IIoT technology in the factory of a visionary manufacturing leader like Herb Homeyer,” said Memex CEO David McPhail. “With a correct focus on achieving business value versus simply counting connected devices, IIoT represents no less than the next industrial revolution. The previous three industrial revolutions were mechanization powered by steam engines in the 1800s, mass production powered by electricity and the assembly line in the early 1900s, and automation powered by computers in the late 1900s. Ushering in the fourth industrial revolution, IIoT is powered by the Internet and software applications like MERLIN.”

Memex’s flagship software product, MERLIN, is an IIoT shop-floor-to-top-floor communications platform that provides real-time manufacturing analytics. According to company representatives, MERLIN delivers an average productivity increase of 10 per cent to 50 per cent, and earns more than 20-per-cent profit improvement based on just a 10-per-cent increase in OEE. It promises to consistently achieve payback in less than four months with an Internal Rate of Return (IRR) greater than 300 per cent, and connects to any machine, old or new, utilizing native MTConnect, other protocols, or MERLIN hardware adapters for older machines.