MANUFACTURING SOFTWARE
integrated with Cimco’s manufacturing data management database product, Cimco MDM, and its NC fi le management system, NC-Base. “Since our products are fully integrated, information from our databases can be used in MDC re- ports,” Romanowski said. “For example, if a part cycle time estimate is stored in the database it can be used for com- parison to actual cycle times in MDC-Max reports.”
Cost-Effective Monitoring Among shop-fl oor monitoring solutions, manufacturing consultant TechSolve Inc. (Cincinnati) offers its Viz Products monitoring solutions as an attractive option for smaller shops, noted Ron Pieper, TechSolve product manager. The com- pany offers multiple layers of adapters in its Viz line. “There are a lot of people saying ‘Let’s get MTConnect done,’” Pieper said. A large aircraft maker used the MiniViz to start up a monitoring system where none was previously installed. “They have a chunk of machines that haven’t been
A major issue is deciding how much data to collect, and
TechSolve positioned MiniViz as a tool to get people started monitoring. “We caution how much to collect. If you try to present everything under sun, you’re going to get knocked over—it’s a fi re hose,” Pieper said. “There are an immense amount of variables. You don’t need very much to get a big, big improvement, and you can get into it less expensively.”
Real-Time Shop-Floor Updates
Although Big Data casts a big shadow over manufactur- ing, many see it as more of a future problem. “It still looms in the future. There’s a lot of talk about it but in practice, we’re very much driven by what we need today,” said Jim Finnerty, product manager, ShopFloorConnect, Wintriss Controls (Acton, MA). “It’s important to know what’s coming.” Shop-fl oor customers today are looking for integration
of software like Wintriss’ ShopFloorConnect data collection and monitoring with existing ERP and MES software, he said. “We tie into their existing software and we have visibility of what’s going on on the shop fl oor at any one time. We can make the scheduling software come to life.” With ShopFloorConnect, users get an integrat- ed solution that’s highly customizable. Real-time customizable notifi cations are the latest tweak to Wintriss’ ShopFloorConnect, Finnerty said, greatly speeding up data delivery. “We’re all about increas- ing effi ciency and reducing downtime,” he said.
Forcam’s Force shop-fl oor management software shows production machine tool assets’ performance in real-time from locations anywhere in the world.
monitored. They like our concept of MiniViz because it’s a lightweight, tiny application running on an attached PC.” TechSolve’s ShopViz is a more extensive solution, but
both are fully MTConnect-compliant, Pieper added. “The standard is driving in a direction where there’s efforts mov- ing into inspection and quality,” he said. “The more that we can learn about the machine and the metadata, the more it will help us to understand what’s going on with the gene- alogy of parts and what’s collected. I’m seeing a greater acceptance of the concept of monitoring, from users and from machine tool builders and control suppliers. We’ve got a perfect storm [with Big Data and IoT], what’s going to happen next? There’s going to be a big merge in collecting and interpreting the data.”
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AdvancedManufacturing.org | October 2015
Looking for New Smart Manufacturing Solutions One of the biggest issues for shop fl oor manag- ers is knowing what to measure and what to ignore.
Recent research at the National Institute of Standards and Tech- nology (NIST; Gaithersburg, MD) focused on helping manufac- turing operations decide what to collect from the shop fl oor. NIST’s project is its Smart Manufacturing Operations Plan- ning and Control Program, noted Moneer Helu, mechanical engineer, NIST Systems Integration Division, Engineering Laboratory, who was a Manufacturing Engineering “30 Under 30” award recipient in 2014. The NIST program is develop- ing a product lifecycle test bed built on a cyber-physical infrastructure to enable smart manufacturing research and development, with the goal to help spur US manufacturers’ competitiveness with better factory data-collection methods. “What can you do with that data? How do you enable in- novations, and get some value from that activity? They want
Image courtesy Forcam Inc.
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