More and more, the collaborative manufacturing model is being embraced by industry worldwide. Customers, suppliers, and regulatory agencies are benefiting by linking directly to the manufacturing process, ensuring quality deliverables, improving costs, and monitoring process standards compliance. While these initiatives address issues "at the factory floor," the major beneficiaries of this model are typically "beyond the factory floor."
Today, manufacturers need to extend and implement this model at the production floor level. Plant personnel need links to process functional descriptions, job-specific training, schematics, troubleshooting guides, maintenance procedures and schedules. Quality and process engineers need accessibility to historical and runtime data on a common platform in order to utilize their analysis tools. Unfortunately, much of this data resides within legacy, proprietary, and fragmented systems throughout the organization, and cannot easily be accessed.
The solution lies with the Open Connectivity Initiative. OPC, OLE for process control, provides open connectivity to literally thousands of process devices on the market today. This opens the door for development of custom applications and acquisition systems capable of logging process data to native database platforms such as SQL Server or Oracle. HTML, XML, Java, ADO, and ASP can be used to query, link, and present your data and documents within a platform-independent web browser, allowing universal access to a wide audience. The beauty of such a system is that it is fully customizable to address the individual needs of your plant personnel.
The screen shots presented here illustrate some of what is possible by employing current web technologies to collaborate your factory floor data. Process monitoring, shown here, is accomplished by means of dynamic Java-based applets, designed to deliver real-time process data viewable in either Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer. JavaScript, VBScript, and Remote Scripting are the technologies utilized to develop this remote monitoring solution.
This view, Monitor: Furnace Section, shows a simple Java-based graph designed to display historical process data, viewable in either Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer. Trace up to six individual pens with common y-axis scaling. An interactive cursor dynamically displays x and y values as it is moved across the surface of the graph. The user is at liberty to use any server-side scripting language to query and dynamically generate the datapoints and initialize the applet.
The final view is Monitor: HCD Cleaning Section. Developed as a Six Sigma control plan, this interface embraces the factory floor data collaboration model. Quality standards are dynamically applied to each of the critical variables associated with the process, and those found out of compliance are clearly and appropriately identified. This view is available for both run-time and historical data sets. Additionally, links are provided to valuable documents and procedures pertaining to the efficient operation of this production line. Training, functional descriptions, preventative maintenance, schematics, and quality documents are some examples.
Certainly, implementing an n-tier architecture requires careful planning and execution. However, the benefits of a fully integrated factory information system will undoubtedly provide an invaluable and effective toolset with infinite possibilities. With this, factory floor collaborative manufacturing can be realized.
If you are interested in implementing such a model, www.processanalytics.net may serve as a resource for you to experiment and ultimately develop your own ideas and solutions, taking advantage of the freeware and examples posted there.
