Simpler, less-expensive monitoring tools are now available, leveraging the established protocols to make installation at shops easier. “When I go into a company, I get the guys that are bought in,” Pieper added. “But there are some that are going to be overwhelmed with some of this, so we try to get to the basics.” The TechSolve MTConnect-compliant Viz line of shop-floor monitoring products include the more full-featured ShopViz, and the MiniViz announced at the MTConnect Conference in April.
“It all starts off with connectivity—if you don’t have connectivity, you don’t have anything.”
The MiniViz solution is more limited in scope and it’s designed to be more of an introductory data-monitoring tool, Pieper said. Automated collection of two or three pieces of data from each machine is a good start in many cases, Pieper added, not- ing that part of the battle is changing the culture. “There’s shops out there that are still running tapes and using floppy disks,” he said.
More people than ever are looking to automate their processes, said Greg Mercurio, president of Shop Floor Automations Inc. (La Mesa, CA), a reseller of Predator Software’s manufacturing data collection suite and of the cloud-based Scytec data monitoring solution. “Time is money, and now there’s more in-pro- cess probing and automatic collection of data,” he add. “The key is everything is done at the machine tool.”
The MTConnect protocol is a great solution, Mercurio noted, but he said it will take some time to become more fully accepted in the industry. “The biggest problem is that the machine builders haven’t fully embraced it,” said Mercurio, add- ing that even some of the machine builders that have endorsed MTConnect don’t promote the protocol as much as they could. “In two years, I think people are going to understand what MTConnect is and we’ll see more people embracing it. The challenge is educating people about it.”
Using either the Scytec or Predator solutions, customers can immediately start collecting data on the status of their machines, with the systems automatically tell- ing shop managers what they need to know about part counts, cycle time, program number, and many other key variables, Mercurio said. “The new trend is for PCs on the shop floor and leveraging paperless manufacturing solutions,” he added. “The factory floor is going digital and embracing wireless, leveraging Windows tablets, iPads and thin clients, which offer lower cost of ownership, flexibility and ease of deployment. With this new trend comes software to manage, control, view and de- liver a complete ‘digital package’ to the shop floor for the operator to streamline the process. This provides complete revision control to shop floor.”
Real-Time Data Delivery
For shops looking to improve performance, getting data off the factory floor in real time is critical. “Real-time information is probably the Holy Grail of manufac- turing,” said Memex’s McPhail. In many cases of smaller shops, an operation with
October 2014 |
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