Smart Interface for COnnected MachinING Operation
Challenge
In Industry 4.0, the manufacturing world is embracing information and communication technology (ICT) more and more. Applications range from production management to smart material handling, from autonomous vehicles to sensor networks for machine monitoring. To gain the maximum benefit from adopting these systems, production machines must be directly interconnected with the factory ICT.
Making a network connection is only the start: making all machines, sensors and systems interact and play together like a well-tuned orchestra is the actual challenge. Efficient ways must be found to specify these interactions, since conventional programming would be too time consuming. Another significant aspect of this challenge is the need to bridge the technology gap and integrate legacy machines with no or only rudimentary digital networking capabilities.
Solution
INCOMING will develop a new integrated and interoperable solution to connect different types of machines through an open system that can be easily scaled and modified. This will be composed by an open source infrastructure for distributed industrial process measurement and control systems based on the 4DIAC platform, with a STM32 based solution as production machine add-on hardware.
To demonstrate the system functionality, this solution will be installed in three turning machines, with three different generations of machine control technologies. Machine operators and production managers will be able to monitor and control status and parameter data from these machines, enabling them to increase the overall equipment efficiency (OEE) by discovering problems and process inefficiencies faster.
FED4SAE Support
INCOMING will be carried out thanks to support by fortiss for the 4DIAC implementation and to support by ST Microelectronics for the chosen prototype STM32MP1 boards with X-NUCLEO expansion. Business innovation coaching is supported by Blumorpho.
Impact
INCOMING will generate impact in several ways. The first one is to establish a digital infrastructure that allows Zannini to gather operational status data from tool machines, which in turn can be used to improve production management processes, with the goal of increasing the Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) of these machines by an amount between 5% and 10%. The second reason is to permit Zannini to gain knowledge about the advantages of open software and hardware platforms for machine connectivity over commercial ones, so as to gain a competitive advantage in a fast changing market. Furthermore, the know-how that will be generated during INCOMING will also introduce the possibility for Zannini to create new services or even products for other companies.