Are you ready for Smart Manufacturing? | mojo4industry Development Debate
As Indian manufacturers continue to race with Industry 4.0, they need smart manufacturing solutions that simultaneously integrate data from multiple factory devices, while providing insights. system critical to proactively manage and optimize production, maintenance, energy use, and planning.
Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Cloud Services and Artificial intelligence (AI) are the key technological factors of digital transformation and new business opportunities. Advantech, a global leader in industrial IoT, embraces evolution and innovation. The company promotes Industry 4.0 transformation and accelerates the production process. Advantech constructs smart cities, reduces energy consumption, streamlines retail services, enhances healthcare, and relieves traffic congestion. After more than three decades of diligent technology development, Advantech has built a comprehensive foundation for edge to cloud IoT applications – from sensing devices, edge computing platforms to cloud applications. Advantech’s edge devices are powered by the WISE-DeviceOn remote device management software. Their WISE-PaaS industrial IoT cloud platform provides a broad range of industrial apps and the WISE-Marketplace unleashes endless possibilities of industrial IoT solutions.
Giving a brief introduction of the company, Yamini Chavan, Channel Sales Manager, Advantech India said, “Advantech is moving ahead with mission of enabling an intelligent planet. Our last year’s revenue was US$ 1.75 billion and market capital share was US$ 5.55 billion. Advantech is having worldwide presence in 27 countries, 14 repair centers, 4 logistic centers and 3 manufacturing sites. Advantech is a global leader in industrial IoT and has been ranked fifth place on the Best Global Taiwan Brands list, with a brand value of US$632 million.”
Entering a New Era of Smart Manufacturing
Lubi Electronics, the channel partner of Advantech in India, has provided different solutions to CNC machine manufacturers, automobile assembly lines with Advantech’s extensive hardware and WISE-PaaS, WebAccess software portfolio.
Talking about his company’s association with Advantech, Vijay Panchal, Product Manager, Lubi Electronics said, “Our association with Advantech started in 2013 as their industrial automation channel partner. We are basically an industrial computing platform provider and the VIP channel partner of Advantech in India. In India, we provide both the standard and customized computing servers and workstations. We also provide WISE-PaaS integration solutions. We are working very closely with Advantech in a lot of industrial applications and supporting our customers from different industries like power, water and manufacturing in industries like automobile, pharma, textile, plastic and machine tools.”
Legacy equipment is a major barrier to Industry 4.0 deployments. According to industry estimates, more than 90% of factory assets are not connected to a network. Rather than replacing the old assets which can be a costly affair, manufacturers can modernize their legacy equipment by integrating some sensors to make it Industry 4.0 ready and compatible with new technologies.
“To meet the challenges of legacy equipment, we work on by adding in additional sensors like vibration sensors or pressure sensors that would enable the machine to transfer a very useful data for carrying out predictive maintenance or carrying out the analysis of machine health,” adds Mr. Panchal.
Advantech’s WISE-PaaS Industrial IoT cloud platform provides edge-to-cloud services to enable real IoT-based business cloud models in various vertical markets. WISE-PaaS has integrated various software tools such as WebAccess, WISE-PaaS/EdgeLink, WISE-PaaS/EdgeSense and WISE-PaaS/VideoSense.
“Advantech offers hardware and software for smart manufacturing and IoT 4.0. Advantech WebAccess is a smart SCADA software. WebAccess SCADA is a 100% web-based SCADA in terms of programming as well as client view application purpose. Its mobile application allows to real time SCADA monitoring and controlling,” said Tushar Patel, Sr. Product Executive, Lubi Electronics while explaining the advantages of Advantech’s solutions.
Talking about how to implement Advantech IoT in different applications, Mr. Patel presents a few case studies of projects executed by Lubi.
Ahmedabad based Harsha Engineers, a reputed client of Lubi Electronics, has a fleet of CNC machines but are in a segmented network. Though CNC machines themselves are capable to count cycle times and number of parts produced etc, but it is limited to machine controller only. To measure the productivity, the client was taking all the readings manually and later on they analyze the data to determine machine performance. Therefore, they needed CNC machine monitoring solution to improve its production by maintaining scheduling maintenance, machine uptime monitoring with safety features.
Some of the challenges in terms of integrating IoT include:
- Communication with CNC controllers
- Managing different cycle time to count overall efficiency
- Generate standard report without putting extra hardware by collecting data from controller with the help of shift report, daily report and monthly report.
By partnering with Advantech to advance the client’s manufacturing prowess, Lubi Electronics provides fully integrated CNC machine IoT applications services that help the client easily identify workflow bottlenecks. and optimize subsystems for maximum efficiency.
Lubi Electronics provided Advantech CNC solution that comes with standard drivers like Fanuc, Mitsubishi, Siemens, Kuka Robotics, and Brothers as well as Advantech LNC to enable CNC machines to communicate to controller and derive live data related to cycle times, performance, number of parts produced, rejects, downtime reasons, and reject reasons etc. A dedicated dashboard was created to analyze all data over single platform.
“Advantech WebAccess CNC software comes with predefined dashboard to easily monitor connected CNC machines and its live parameters. We used Advantech WebAccess SCADA for better and user-friendly analysis of each and every CNC machine,” said Mr. Patel.
Advantech iFactory smart manufacturing solutions
In today’s shopfloor, with the automation level up, we have robots, conveyors, AGVs, and CNC machines. So, it is important to equip the intelligence power into the machines deployed on the shop floor.
Also participating at the discussion from Taipei in Taiwan, Henry Chen, iFactory Solution, BDM, Advantech Co. Ltd said, “We not only provide the hardware, but we combine both hardware and software into the total solutions which is called solution-ready package. Our solution-ready package simultaneously integrate data from multiple factory devices, while providing insights. system critical to proactively manage and optimize production, maintenance, energy use, and planning.” He adds, “In the WISE-PaaS platform, we pack different solutions into different apps, and each different app solves different pain points.”
Conclusion
Manufacturers today are seeking efficiencies and production and ways to transform their business through industry 4.0. Advantech offers intelligent factory solutions designed to help customers unlock the potential of data acquisition, data computing, data visualization, and centralized management in order to create their own smart factories, while also improving productivity, reducing loss, and increasing profits. Advantech solutions include an overall equipment effectiveness solution, and a factory energy management solution. The OEE solution utilizes Real Time Machine management for maximizing operational excellence whereas the FEM solution enables centralized monitoring and data management for optimizing energy efficiency. For these solutions, customers can use Advantix on site servers or cloud platform. The solution features support KPI management, alarm notifications, and remote access to dashboards for convenient management. Moreover, the provision of data visualization and real time dashboards in the industry 4.0 Situation Room allows managers to make efficient data driven decisions.
Over the next five years, Advantech plans to continue to cultivate local operations, present AI solutions to business and become the role model of digital transformation and global leading brand of industrial IoT.
Furthermore, as a WISE-PaaS VIP channel partner of Advantech, Lubi Electronics would like to continue to work with Advantech in developing more application-oriented smart manufacturing solutions for the industry.
