Is old machinery a roadblock? Here’s how to transform them into smart machines
ON DEMAND WEBINAR
- Date: Thursday, May 24, 2018
- Time: 11:00AM TO 11:45AM CT
- Duration: 45 Minutes
Softweb Solutions, Inc.
Softweb Solutions, Inc.
Softweb Solutions, Inc.
Nowadays, improving performance efficiency of 3M (Man, Machine, and Material) has become an everyday expression of almost all companies to remain competitive. But when it comes to small and mid-sized industrial organizations, machines are of crucial importance because of the capital investment they ask for. To improve performance efficiency of machines, the analysis of current state is essential, but the old machinery is a huge roadblock for many.
That’s why companies from different industries like oil and gas, manufacturing, food and beverage, healthcare, and many more are concerned to know how to capture and evaluate machine data while not replacing the existing machinery. Apart from how to upgrade the data extraction process from old machinery for maximum benefits, during the webinar, our experts will talk about how digitization of old machines will help you to identify bottlenecks, standstills, poor performance, eliminate manual data entry and improve asset utilization. In a nutshell, our representatives will much talk about why and how to jump on the IIoT bandwagon without replacing your old machines.
The following are the answers to the questions that were asked during the live webinar.
Answer 1: Ideally, it depends on the number of machines, type of machines, and your network set-up as well. Also, sometimes customers have a specific request on KPIs and custom dashboard. However, on an average, standard POC will take around 2-3 months of time.
Answer 2: Thank you for the question, this is a typical case we get to hear most of the time, where the OEM provides the tool which stores the data for a limited period only and nothing much can be done after that.
To address this we have to define the proper data warehousing strategy, wherein we will extract the data from the tool and store into your local environment depending on the number of machines from where we have to take data.
Once this set up is in place, we can push the data to the cloud-based platform for the future analysis.
Answer 3:There are two possibilities here, with which we can help you: The first is if you monitor your legacy machines through PLCs, we can route them to the cloud via IoT gateway installation using Modbus TCP or Modbus serial.
Or if you do not have PLCs, we can retrofit your legacy machines with the required external sensors. To do that, we have to examine existing positioning or location of each machine. Based on that we’ll finalize the communication protocol for data syncing from equipment to gateway. For example, BLE and Zigbee are preferred for short distance communication, while LTE, Sigfox, and LORA are preferred for long-range communications.
Answer 4: We have so many SDK flavors available along with integration documents. We can work with your preferred hardware vendors and have it in place.
Answer 5: No, PLC modification is not necessary. To get data from your PLC, we need to know the existing PLC’s available and accessible communication port, Modbus Serial or Modbus TCP. We also need PLC backup code to fetch data from communication port.
If communication port is not configured in PLC, then we need PLC code upload/download permissions to fetch the data from existing PLC. Again these options are very much subjective in terms of how your setup works.
Answer 6: No, the age of machine doesn’t matter. To make machines IIoT compatible, we need the following information:
If you are utilizing Modbus TCP, then provide us host IP, subnet mask, gateway, port, RTU, telnet or C701, and unit ID. We also need PLC backup code, and its written language.
Answer 7: It’s clear that your goal is to make CNC milling machine energy-efficient. So out of different types of energy meters available, we would recommend a smart meter. Smart meter allows you to monitor daily electricity usage. In fact, it records energy consumption data at 30-minute intervals even. The data helps you to analyze how much energy your CNC milling machine is using and when. Overall, it can help you to manage electricity usage better and hence reduces electric bill.
You can also let us know the age of your machine, energy consumption rate by your CNC milling machine, and the downtime frequency to understand how we can move forward together.
Moreover, most energy consumption monitoring meters give details about voltage, current, frequency, power factor, power/demand, energy/time-of-use (energy per shift), and loss compensation.
Answer 8: We use our own custom-built IoTConnect platform. The platform is completely hardware and infrastructure independent. Also, the micro-services and multi-tenancy based architecture enable users to manage varieties of machinery and equipment, embed sensors and tags associated with the user roles/types and location.
Answer 9: IIoT devices are vulnerable to attack as they are connected to the Internet. But it doesn’t mean that they cannot be protected. To protect data, we follow CPID authentication, OAuth 2.0 authentication, and the concept of tokens in protocols. And with SSL and TLS protocols, we also secure all communications.