Brea, California, May 23, 2017—Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) has emerged as the key performance index (KPI) in Industry 4.0. The real value of OEE comes from interpreting the losses incurred due to a piece of equipment’s availability, performance, or quality of output. By taking action to reduce these losses, your OEE score will naturally improve. For factories to enjoy optimal OEE, device connectivity is essential in order to collect precise data. Moxa is one of the few product manufacturers and solution providers to offer a comprehensive product portfolio and solutions that upgrade customers’ production technology in order to improve the availability and performance rates of their equipment as well as the quality of the output. Since the advent of Industry 4.0, a number of challenges have been stacking up at production lines, which include the capability to alternate between high- or low-quantity production, an increased demand for customized products, the quest for zero-error production, and setting up mixed-model production lines. “The best approach is to try understanding what needs to be changed in the manufacturing process to get better results on shop floors. A three-pronged approach that examines the availability, performance, and quality rates is suggested. Once the problem areas have been identified, new technologies can be sought to address the shortcomings in a manufacturing process.” says Rick Peng, product manager at Moxa.
Availability: Understanding Machine Status to Reduce Downtime and Improve Network Availability
• Collecting Data for Predictive Maintenance
During production, machines generate different types of data, such as machine vibration, motor current, and coolant level. Based on this data, machine maintenance engineers schedule maintenance tasks (predictive maintenance) to avoid any unexpected machine downtime. However, the data presents itself in different forms. One is streaming data, which is transmitted in big volumes and requires preprocessing before it is sent to a back-end system. The other is status data, which is transmitted in small volumes and via a transparent method without any preprocessing. Thus, the system has to use different methods to collect both status and streaming data. Moxa’s ioPAC 8500, ioLogik E2200, and ioLogik 2500 series smart I/O can provide front-end intelligence to reduce data size so that it is suitable for front-end data processing. In addition, the ioLogik remote I/O, MGate, and NPort device servers are designed to transmit small volumes of data, which is more compatible with transparent data collection without front-end processing.
• Building Network Infrastructure to Maximize Uptime
Implicit communications, usually used to check the availability of systems that connect PLCs and devices, are based on multicast. Moxa’s V-ON solution enables a physical network, unicast traffic, and multicast traffic to recover within milliseconds when there is a failure on a network. Thus, V-ON technology ensures that the system keeps running and maximizes productivity. In addition, the MXview ToGo, provides real-time notifications on mobile devices to reduce system downtime.
Performance: Reducing the Changeover Time to Increase the Productivity of Machines or Operators
• Using Reliable On-Chip Flow-Control Data Transmission Increases
Productivity High customization is a significant value of Industry 4.0, prompting regular changes in the programming of computer numerical control (CNC) machines. However, CNC machines always take a long time to download new programs. Therefore, the stability of the data transfer is very important, especially in old machines with serial interfaces. Moxa’s serial-to-Ethernet device server with a flow-control feature is normally used to stop incoming data to prevent data drop; otherwise, the dropped data has to be resent. Spending more time on data transfers means less manufacturing time.
• An Intelligent Supervisor Meets Various Demands for Mixed-Model Production
Mixed-model production entails a high degree of variation that includes thousands of different options and combinations to produce customer-specified components and multiple product types on the same assembly line. To increase the productivity of machines and operators, Moxa’s ioPAC 8500 programmable controller helps categorize the production tasks, ensuring that the task sequence can be automatically retrieved from a manufacturing execution system (MES).
Quality: Achieving Zero Defects and Providing Early Warnings
Production data is the key to help you understand the status of production on a factory floor. Two types of data are applicable: stable data (on/off status and the volumes of data are small) and temporary data (generated over short periods and needs to be recorded without missing any parts). Moxa’s ioPAC is a ruggedly designed IIoT controller that collects precise data in harsh environments to keep line managers up-to-date about the status of all the devices in the field.
To learn more, please visit: https://www.moxa.com/en/solutions/industry-focus/manufacturing
Also read this white paper to learn more about how device connectivity is the key to optimal OEE in Industry 4.0.