“The only way to raise the living standards of our citizens is to raise productivity,” stated George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK Productivity Plan, in June 2015. This is the reason why shop floor networking software specialists, Forcam, has chosen productivity as the key theme for their stand 5060 at MACH.
Forcam will have a live model manufacturing cell on the stand to record work in progress as components pass from one workstation to another. Visitors will see how the system gathers real time information and generates instant customised reports.
Forcam UK managing director Andrew Steele noted, “Productivity in the UK is around 30 percent behind other G7 nations like the USA, Germany and France. The government highlighted the need for investment in capital equipment, skills and innovation, but without intelligent software to integrate the physical assets and give humans real insight into operations, gains cannot be fully realised. Productivity is one measure, but in capital intensive areas of manufacturing then ROI is also an important measurement.”
Digitisation of shop floor operations has many names: machine to machine communication – M2M, the industrial internet of things (IIoT), Industry 4.0 and the Smart Factory. These all refer to the process of networking shop floor operations to gather and analyse performance data in real time so mangers, supervisors and technicians can work together to improve efficiency, quality and output.
“Forcam Force is all about interconnectivity, information flow and providing real-time data for better control. Real-time data can be streamed directly into SAP and other ERP systems so senior management can take action to optimise global performance,” explained Andrew.
Elements of Forcam Force
Forcam Force is a manufacturing execution system (MES) comprising a suite of software products that streamline factory shop floor communication. This passes instructions to machine and process operators, gathers data on shop floor operations and provides real-time analysis reporting to team members via a role-relevant dashboard.
Data to the Operator
Every production process has work instructions, parts lists, tooling, NC programs, drawings and other information essential to complete the task. With Forcam Force this can be downloaded direct to the operator’s workstation screen. Digitally archived manufacturing information is easily updated and access can be controlled. The system retains full traceability of changes, recording what alterations were made to what part of the specification by whom, when, and why.
Machine Interconnection
Shop floor networking is most effective when every process is networked. Machine makers use varied systems to gather and transmit operation data. While leading manufacturers use communication software with standard protocols to simplify interconnection, legacy machines often use obsolete or obscure data collection methods. All data needs to be aggregated and processed so that it is streamed into the MES in a consistent format. From experience gained connecting over 60,000 machines, Forcam’s answer is powerful plug-ins relevant to the machine and control protocols.
Big Data Analysis
A big data problem is information overload. A manager overwhelmed with production and machine performance statistics will fail to identify critical action points. Forcam Force therefore creates a cyber-physical-system, a virtual model of the production process. Processing is enabled by a live cache, in-memory computing for complex event processing for high speed handling of the large data volumes. Comparison of real data to the virtual model identifies anomalies and will pinpoint the action areas.
Reporting and Visualisation
The Forcam system presents each team member with a configurable dashboard relevant to them. Productivity and better overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) are the goals of the managing director and so information presented will focus on KPI’s such as use of plant capacity. The plant manager is looking at daily performance optimisation, so needs to know where there are outages, processes performing sub-optimally and where capacity may be available to re-direct work and keep production flowing. At the operator level, information is presented on how best to complete the task and gathered on job timings to compare to target time.
The cloud based information is accessible 24/7 from any location, subject to security access consents and protocols, and can be presented on different devices including desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones.
Track-and-Trace
Every operation has a digital profile. In the fully-connected workshop this data stream is constantly analysed in the cloud. With process digitisation it is possible to define what parameters characterise in-specification product. On a machining centre, for example, this could be a combination of data on spindle speed, time and power drawn. Deviations from this profile will flag suspect components and possible problems before even on-machine metrology spots the issue.
By monitoring every manufacturing operation, taking feeds from machine sensors, inputs from the human/machine interface, scanning parts bar codes as components progress and data from other sources we can build a complete picture of operations. This data is processed in real time in the cloud to create a full component production and processing history.
