With the new Forcam Force shop-floor management … to seek ... Cimco Americas’ MDC-Max...

With the new Forcam Force shop-floor management software, users access key real-time factory-floor manufacturing metrics.

October 2015 | AdvancedManufacturing.org 53

manufacturing Software

Why Manufacturing Needs Real-Time Data Collection

Patrick WaurzyniakSenior Editor

Real-time factory-floor data collection

captures a goldmine of information that

can improve operational performance Real-time machine tool data collection isnt

just about helping manufacturers improve

productivity and profitability, although thats

certainly a promised outcome. Its also an

essential first step toward a data-driven, high-tech

manufacturing sector that is globally competitive.

Todays data-collection and monitoring solutions

already help manufacturing operations management

to see, analyze and quickly act upon time-sensitive

data coming off the shop floor. While these new solu-

tions are more readily available and also less expen-

sive than in the past, they are still installed only at a

relatively small portion of factories and shops, with

some industry insiders estimating that fewer than 5%

of machines are currently being digitally monitored.

Image courtesy Forcam Inc.

54 AdvancedManufacturing.org | October 2015

Machine tools connected through MTConnect, an open-

architecture, royalty-free protocol for machine communica-

tions, or through a variety of proprietary protocols available

from CNC controls suppliers, can turn a growing stream of

data coming off the plant floor into useful information. Key

operational metrics such as overall equipment effectiveness

(OEE), machine uptime and capacity utilization allow shop

managers to quickly view the performance of a particular ma-

chine or factory, and adjust as needed.

IoT, Big Data Concerns

The coming onslaught of connected Internet of Things

(IoT) devices and the Big Data deluge may prompt more

manufacturers to seek rock-solid solutions for dealing with

extremely large amounts of operational data.

More technology providers, such as Cisco, are moving

into the manufacturing space with solutions for handling

large amounts of unmanaged data, said David McPhail,

CEO of Memex Inc. (Burlington, ON, Canada), developer of

manufacturing execution systems (MES). Within our industry

there are 20 million CNC machine tools installed globally,

two million in North American alone, he added, and three

more support assets are typically associated with each CNC,

which creates an 80-million-machine universe. Yet over 90%

of the worlds CNC assets are not connected because of a

plethora of different data protocols.

As an increasing amount of this data is captured, those

within manufacturing see a higher-tech, data-driven manu-

facturing industry taking shape. Big Data is just one part of

the Third Platform of computinga convergence of mobile

computing, social media, the cloud and Big Data, he said.

As this third platform takes hold, plant managers of

manufacturing companies are beginning to understand

they cannot manage what they cannot measure, McPhail

said. IoT or the Industrial Internet of Things [IIoT] has some

boardrooms buzzing about the possibilities for data-driven

manufacturing, so its helpful to us, but its still a high-flying

concept that could take several years to land on earth.

Helping this concept land is partly depending on that

first stepcapturing and analyzing data that offers the most

value, which isnt as simple as it seems considering the vast

amount of data available in a manufacturing environment.

Our developers are constantly improving the process-

ing of the immense quantity of events that can be streaming

into a database from a shop floor, said Jody

Romanowski, CEO of Cimco Americas LLC

(Streamwood, IL), a developer of data-collection

software solutions. When a new system is

implemented, it is important to determine if the

information will be valuable to you and plan the

collection of relevant data carefully.

Its easy enough to collect Big Data, but

make sure you are collecting events from which

you can assemble useful information, she

added. I think some of the Big Data arrays may

be filled with information that is not relevant or

cant be processed into useful information.

Embracing Advanced Technologies

Shops today are looking for ways to streamline

operations, improve productivity, and reduce cost,

noted Mohamed Abuali, CEO of Forcam Inc. (Cincinnati and

Friedrichshafen, Germany). More manufacturers are embracing

advanced technologies, Abuali said. At large enterprises, there

is a necessity for global manufacturing intelligence and bench-

marking, where managers can access KPIs and analytics at

their fingertips, anytime, anywhere, in any language. At smaller

manufacturers and job shops, there is a growing desire to moni-

tor the shop floor, understand part flows, planned versus actual

performance, run programs, and access paperless information.

All manufacturers are trying to enhance the skills of an

aging workforce and use technology to drive productivity,

he added. At Forcam, we offer an scalable solution that

can address the needs of large and smaller manufacturing

enterprises, via a cloud-based or on-premise solution and


The MERLIN (Manufacturing Execution Real-Time Lean Information

Network) MES software from Memex Inc. features dashboards with

critical shop-floor metrics including OEE, availability, part quality and

machine performance.

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the needed shop floor management training to assist them to

use smart data to make smart decisions.

The future lies in development of solutions that allow man-

ufacturers to be more proactive, intelligent, and informed,

and to support executing timely decisions, Abuali said.

Forcams platform enables connectivity not only to machines,

but to any IT system, such as quality, maintenance, PLM,

and tool data, he added.

MTConnect standardizes links be-

tween systems, applications, and entire

factories to provide an integrated over-

all manufacturing system. In addition

to MTConnect, Forcams technology

supports a variety of real-time plug-ins

to machine CNCs and PLCs, including

manufacturer-specific drivers.

Forcam is a pioneer of Industry

4.0the 4th industrial revolution, also

called the Industrial Ethernet. A major

theme of Industry 4.0 is to build a cyber-

physical system to map production Big

Data in real-time, in a virtual space, like

a cyber mirror, he said. Imagine your

factory modeled in the cloud; this today

is a reality. Big data requires advanced

technological features such as in-memo-

ry technology for real-time data acquisi-

tion and processing. With this objective

data, wastes are demonstrated crystal

clear and you win the largest transpar-

ency about the state of your manufac-

turing. You can analyze the production

virtually and optimize it in real-time.

Getting Connected

Many of the disconnected ma-

chines on plant floors are older legacy

equipment representing a huge invest-

ment, and these machines can require

more technology than a standard

MTConnect adapter to fully implement

modern data collection, monitoring

and analysis systems.

Reliable costs and quality are

achieved by data-driven awareness on

the shop floor, said Memexs McPhail.

Second and third-tier manufacturing

suppliers must be able to demonstrate

that they can capture, analyze and share

their production data with their upstream

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partners. The Overall Equipment Effectiveness

[OEE] metric is now table stakes in the manufac-

turing business, he said. OEE equals availability

multiplied by quality multiplied by performance. The

ability to demonstrate OEE as well as a process to

constantly improve plant efficiency is the basis of

coveted trusted-supplier relationships.

OEE is an ideal, industry-accepted metric,

McPhail added. An OEE of 80% or more is

achievable by most manufacturing industry shop

floors and the money people understand this, yet

the majority of shop floors cant produce this measurement

on any kind of consistent basis.

I wish I could say that clipboard data gathering and

spread-sheet analysis was not as prevalent as it was, but

thats the number one app out there right now, McPhail

said. A shocking number of manufacturing CEOs tell me

their major challenge is being told one thing about plant op-

erations and seeing something completely different on their

income statements. The typical clipboard and spreadsheet

approach to capturing OEE, when it is captured at all, delays

the time CEOs can get insight as to what is actually happen-

ing on the plant floor.

Taking the MTConnect route to shop-floor monitor-

ing has many advantages. As McPhail noted, MTConnect

enables manufacturing equipment to provide data in a single

structured XML format rather than an obstructive array of

proprietary formats. With uniform data available from both

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Cimco Americas MDC-Max manufacturing data collection system delivers

custom reports, real-time alerts and live screens of production data to a

users mobile device.

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legacy and modern production equipment, sensor packages,

and other hardware, software applications can enable more

efficient operations, improved production optimization, and

increased productivity.

As transformative as it is, MTConnect still suffers from

a basic awareness problem, McPhail said. Although

machine tool companies like Mazak are pushing MTCon-

nect from its CEO on down, plant managers who may have

heard of the standard dont know exactly what it is or how it

can help them.

Memexs MERLIN (Manufacturing Execution Real-Time

Lean Information Network) MES system is an industrial-

strength shop-floor-to-top-floor communications platform

that provides efficiency metrics in real time. According to

McPhail, MERLIN delivers a 10-50% average productivity

increase, and earns 20%-plus profit improvement based on

just a 10% increase in OEE. Payback is achievable in less

than four months with Internal Rate of Return [IRR] greater

than 300%, he said. We connect to any machine, old or

new, utilizing native MTConnect, OPC, FOCAS or FANUC I/O

link using MERLIN hardware adapters.

More manufacturers are implementing manufacturing

data systems because their customers are demanding

that they provide accurate real-time and historical informa-

tion on part production, said Cimcos Romanowski. In

addition, shops want information that helps them forecast

more accurately, pinpoint production issues, send real-

time alerts when production problems occur, better under-

stand their plant performance and provide traceability to

the machine level, she said. With the correct information

and reporting, manufacturing companies can improve

interactions with their customers, improve quality, improve

efficiency, reduce maintenance and reduce inventory. The

technology is constantly evolving to meet these require-

ments more efficiently.

Cimcos manufacturing data collection system, MDC-Max,

provides customized reports, graphs, real-time alerts and live

screens showing real-time production data. MDC-Max is fully


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integrated with Cimcos manufacturing data management

database product, Cimco MDM, and its NC file 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-floor 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 Lets 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 havent been

monitored. They like our concept of MiniViz because its a

lightweight, tiny application running on an attached PC.

TechSolves ShopViz is a more extensive solution, but

both are fully MTConnect-compliant, Pieper added. The

standard is driving in a direction where theres 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 whats going on with the gene-

alogy of parts and whats collected. Im seeing a greater

acceptance of the concept of monitoring, from users and

from machine tool builders and control suppliers. Weve

got a perfect storm [with Big Data and IoT], whats going to

happen next? Theres going to be a big merge in collecting

and interpreting the data.

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, youre going to get knocked

overits a fire hose, Pieper said. There are an immense

amount of variables. You dont 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. Theres a lot of talk about it but in practice, were

very much driven by what we need today, said Jim Finnerty,

product manager, ShopFloorConnect, Wintriss Controls

(Acton, MA). Its important to know whats coming.

Shop-floor 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 whats going on on the shop floor

at any one time. We can make the scheduling

software come to life.

With ShopFloorConnect, users get an integrat-

ed solution thats highly customizable. Real-time

customizable notifications are the latest tweak to

Wintriss ShopFloorConnect, Finnerty said, greatly

speeding up data delivery. Were all about increas-

ing efficiency and reducing downtime, he said.

Looking for New Smart Manufacturing Solutions

One of the biggest issues for shop floor 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 floor.

NISTs 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


Forcams Force shop-floor management software shows production machine

tool assets performance in real-time from locations anywhere in the world.

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to know what types of technologies are needed, Helu said.

Measurement science is very much the bread and butter of

NIST. We want to understand not just whether we have the

right data, but if were using the right way to collect it.

NIST is also collaborating with

TechSolve to develop case studies in

relevant areas of manufacturing, Helu

said. The Smart Manufacturing test bed

involves networking NISTs machines

both in the Gaithersburg headquarters

and NISTs Boulder, CO, offices.

Were functioning basically as a

small to medium-sized job shop and

building a cyber component with com-

puter-added technologies, Helu said.

These would include advanced manu-

facturing capabilities such as additive

manufacturing, model-based enterprise,

machine-to-machine communications,

and cloud computing and services, with

the aim of collaborating and creating

highly customizable products that are

faster, cheaper, better, and greener.

Some of the questions that need

answering for shop-floor data collec-

tion and smart manufacturing include

dynamic scheduling and routing and

prognostics for predicting manufacturing maintenance is-

sues, Helu said. Where are those pain points? What are the

problems? Were applying that fundamental research side

and focusing on transferring that to industry, he said.

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Cimco Americas Inc. 888-DNC-7858 / www.cimco.com

Forcam Inc.513-878-2780 / www.forcam-usa.com

Memex Inc.866-573-3895 / www.memex.ca

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 301-975-NIST (6478) / www.nist.org

TechSolve Inc.800-345-4482 / www.techsolve.org

Wintriss Controls800-586-8324 / www.wintriss.com

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With the new Forcam Force shop-floor management … to seek ... Cimco Americas’ MDC-Max...

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