software tracks the performance on any machine tool or related equipment. The system has built-in Ether- net capability, Finnerty said, and it can connect with barcode readers or any other type of machines found in fabrication shops. Automatically collected data is inherently less- biased than manually reported data. “The trend is to- ward more and more machines communicating with
The MiniViz shop-fl oor data monitoring solution from TechSolve serves as an introductory tool for shops looking to implement data-collection and monitoring systems.
Image courtesy TechSolve Inc.
some sort of software to let them know what they’re doing,” Finnerty said. “One of the impediments to that though is that people don’t generally throw away or replace perfectly good machine tools just to get the latest one that can communicate.” Wintriss’ fi rst machine-mounted data-collection terminals were sold in the 1990s. The latest version, the SMI, works in conjunction with the ShopFloor- Connect OEE tracking software, which can be used on newer machines or retrofi tted onto older, legacy machine tools, noted Finnerty. “We’ve developed a simple device, what I like to call a data-collection appliance, that you can install on literally any ma- chine—these are installed on everything from multi- axis CNC machines all the way to an air compressor tucked away in a back room.”
Envisioning the Smart Factory With today’s factory production tools, manufac- turers have more ability to link machines together
SS26
AdvancedManufacturing.org
with sophisticated software and sensors that tell an immense amount of detail about factory processes. “Forcam has a vision for factories of the future. We want to create a world where machines are ‘talk- ing’ with the products that they are producing,” said Franz Gruber, founder and CEO of Forcam GmbH (Friedrichshafen, Germany), developer of the Factory Framework MES software. In such environments, production systems can leverage smart machines and components that can “talk” to each other, he noted, using data on the cloud and communicating with people in the factory and to others connected to manufacturing networks via smart- phones or computers. “The new world of ‘smart fac- tories’ places enormous demands on information technology,” Gruber said. “The fi rst step to its creation must be to form a ‘Cyber Physical System.’ Every event that occurs in real terms must be ready virtually and in real time. These events must be read with great effort from signals and information collected from controllers of various systems and machines. In addition, the entire
production system must be ‘cloud capable,’ with mo- bile access to supervise and control from anywhere at any time.” Shops today are looking to use advanced shop
fl oor management to unite production and planning as closely as possible, Gruber said. “Near-zero downtime and worry-free productivity is the motto—no standstill and no equipment failure,” he said. “With the right shop-fl oor management technology, machines can report themselves when they come to an ‘abnormal condition,’ then we can take the right precautions at the right time to quickly eliminate wastes and errors. They are looking for software that crunches big data in real time, and one that uses complex event process- ing and in-memory technology and the power of the cloud to gather and process information in real time to accelerate shop-fl oor performance.” Such systems can display shop-fl oor performance indicators such as OEE for any factory in any location or time zone in the world and in the right language,
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172