Espousing the concept of Industrial Digitalisation, the AutomationKit from neogramm is a platform that forms the digital heart of a Shop Floor Management (SFM) system, presenting process relevant information in a clear, concise, and portioned manner. The AutomationKit facilitates digitalisation by minimising the effort required to capture, process, and visualise data, increasing data availability, and maximising the quality of the information presented. This information advantage, coupled with your production planning, offers the following benefits to a manufacturing enterprise:
Faster information flow:
The information flow is driven by Operational Technology systems and consolidated with data from Information Technology systems. Process information is immediately visible and presented in a process relevant fashion to all stakeholders throughout the organisation.
Transparency:
Not only may process deviations or problems be visualised at all monitored production phases, but all system elements in the machine park may be better understood and optimised.
Data Availability:
Data may be made available to inter-divisional teams and distributed over hierarchies thereby reducing the risk of operational tunnel vision on the shop floor.
Multifaceted use of measured data:
Measured data may be used to support traceability, provide evidence of regulatory compliance, verify product quality, and facilitate process optimisation.
Cost reduction:
Recognise trends before they become problems, correlate process data with product quality to reduce defects, introduce preventive maintenance to reduce unplanned downtime, and optimise energy usage.
The trend towards flexible manufacturing, reduced lead times, and smaller batch sizes is clear in many industrial branches. Industry 4.0 or Smart Production is the jargon often heard. However, one problem with traditional manufacturing enterprises is the static connectivity between the various shop floor components.
Clearly, this is not an appropriate architecture to support flexible manufacturing. According to Deutsche Bank Research (April 2014, p9), “The Industry 4.0 idea is based upon rapid and efficient data transmission within the value chain.”. What we really need a central switchboard – enter the Manufacturing Service Bus.
The Manufacturing Service Bus provides a uniform communication framework thereby integrating all Information Technology (IT) components, which are usually standardised and hardware independent, and all the Operational Technology (OT) components, which are hardware dependent and usually proprietary. The goal of this integration model is to assure low coupling between the disparate components at the shop floor level, thus enabling a high degree of flexibility for the manufacturing enterprise.
A manufacturing enterprise is a complex organisation that must ceaselessly optimise its operations to meet its business requirements. But there are, quite literally, many moving pieces involved! The physical plant is filled with Operational Technology from, for example, ABB, Beckhoff, B&R, Cognex, and Siemens, which all have their own established protocols. Perhaps there are standalone machines or machines with proprietary interfaces in service? Additionally, this world must be integrated with Information Technology systems from established players such as itac, Guardaus, SAP, Mircosoft, SAS, or even Cloud Services like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, to name but a few.
This may seem to be a daunting task, but neogramm can help you navigate the Industry 4.0 landscape with our consulting expertise, integration services and technology know-how. A case in point: neogramm’s AutomationKit empowers an organisation in order to gain valuable process insight and help paves the way for Smart Production.