Feb 26, 2021
About the Customer
Together with partner Telit, our team is excited to be launching an exciting Product Performance Monitoring & Maintenance initiative for a global machine manufacturer and an industry leader in the Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) sector. The customer is one of the world’s largest suppliers of injection molding machines. With production facilities in North America, South America, Europe and Asia, the customer delivers their state-of-the-art machines to big-name players in Food & Beverage, Healthcare and Consumer Packed Goods (CPG).
The Customer’s Needs
Problem 1: Machine Data & Performance Monitoring
The customer’s top-of-the-line molding machines are extremely well-engineered and last for decades, running 24/7. When the customer sells a machine, however, they lose control over that machine’s production performance data, including Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), Machine Downtime and Manufacturing Scrap, just to name a few.
Solution: The customer recognized that, as their machines were being utilized out in the real world, they were producing a wealth of data that, if harnessed, could be leveraged to improve their next product design, their manufacturing process, as well as the performance, longevity and maintenance of their machines beyond their factory doors.
Problem 2: Machine Maintenance & Repair Services
The industrial machines sold by our customer are complex capital assets built to last for decades. Utilized by leading manufacturers at plants around the world, the machines are critical to the operational success of many of these manufacturers' businesses. As a result, our customer must provide support for their machines. Unexpected problems often require an expert being flown out to a customer site in order to perform machine maintenance or resolve the issue.
Solution: Our customer recognized that, by connecting all the machines they produced to the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT/IIoT), they could provide a new level of asset insight and machine support, thus expanding their business offering and providing more value to their customers at the same time.
The “Connected Machine” Enterprise
Committed to the continuous improvement of their products, processes and services, our OEM customer decided to invest in new Industrial IoT technologies. With their enterprise “Connected Machine” initiative, they aimed to:
- Connect All Existing Machines to the Industrial Internet of Things to enable the capture and collection of machine performance data while machines were being utilized out in the real world.
- Aggregate Machine Performance & Utilization Data into one, centralized, company-operated Cloud-based location to enable access to business intelligence and performance analytics.
- Enable Automated Machine Alarms via a predefined set of production variables and performance thresholds for real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance and downtime minimization.
- Offer a New Premium Level of Remote Machine Support to their customers, allowing specialists to patch, install updates, diagnose and troubleshoot machines remotely first, prior to flying out an expert or avoiding it entirely.
- Offer Off-Site Centralized Machine Data Backups to the customers of their machines to ensure that no critical production or performance data was ever lost.
- Drive Continuous Improvement of Products & Services via full visibility into the health, performance and utilization of their machines around the world, data they could use to improve their products and to implement more efficient, more cost-effective maintenance and support processes.
About the Project
The Technology & Hardware: Telit deviceWISE®
- The customer decided to launch their “Connected Machine” vision leveraging Telit deviceWISE, a leading Industrial IoT platform that enables organizations to connect their assets and devices, visualize machine data, build customized dashboards, integrate shop floor and enterprise systems, and manage all their Internet of Things (IoT) solutions easily, seamlessly and without the need for custom code.
A few highlights of Telit deviceWISE® for Industrial IoT enablement and integration:
- Uniquely user-friendly and flexible, no custom code required;
- Out-of-the-box connectivity via drivers to a wide variety of machines;
- Collection, analyzation and visualization of machine data using plug-and-play;
- Performance analytics, OEE and KPIs;
- Creation of customized dashboards with drag-and-drop widgets;
- Connectors to all the main Cloud providers;
- Direct integration of PLCs to SCADA, to ERP, MRP, MES and any other enterprise and shop floor systems.
The Services & Expertise: Engineering Group
As a strategic solution partner for Telit's Digital Manufacturing technology offering, and thanks to having a long-standing reputation as a niche expert and system integrator for all things Industry 4.0, our Industries eXcellence team was called in to lead the design, development and implementation of this robust IIoT solution. Currently, Engineering’s team is building and delivering the Edge Computing side of the solution:
- Edge Gateways are small industrial computers that will connect to each of our customer's machines physically.
- By running deviceWise on these devices, our team is configuring them to receive messages from the machines, to parse or translate them, and to upload them to a new customer-operated Azure Cloud hub.
- Once activated, the IIoT devices will provide full machine performance transparency in real-time.
- Data coming off machines will be collected, uploaded to the centralized Cloud hub and transformed to analytics.
- Performance analytics will be accessible via web-based dashboards, offering better visibility into machine performance, downtimes and issues, energy consumption and throughput against production targets.
These intelligent IIoT-driven 4G devices will be able to be connected to every existing machine manufactured by our customer, regardless of how it is currently being monitored and connected within their customers’ production facilities. All future machines manufactured by our customer will be connected and smart, with preconfigured devices attached.
Solutions in Scope
- Asset Performance Management
- Industrial Internet of Things (IoT/IIoT)
- Machine Connectivity & Integration
- Machine Data Acquisition & Collection
- Machine Performance Monitoring
- Machine Intelligence & Analytics (OEE & KPIs)
- Machine Maintenance Management
- Field Service Management
- Cloud Integration
- Edge Computing Integration
- MES/MOM Integration
Engineering’s Advantage
This is a strong use case showcasing how manufacturers can leverage enabling technologies to digitalize the production data coming off their machines in order to gain insight and make smarter decisions. This is an even more powerful use case showcasing how Original Equipment Manufacturers can leverage the Industrial Internet of Things to digitalize and monetize the data coming off their products out in the real world, utilizing it to grow their business and to improve the quality of support they can offer to their own customers.
Our team will deliver a successful IIoT solution that will work reliably for thousands of their machines and hundreds of their customers out in the field. It will create value from data, helping our customer gain more recurring support revenue and enabling their Connected Machine enterprise vision. Every machine shipping out of our customer’s warehouse will come with one of our smart Edge Devices installed and ready to capture data for new customers. Customers who sign up for the new premium support model will get the added functionality provided by us via their newly connected machines, meaning this solution can and will be offered across any of the 140 countries in which our customer currently has a presence. In the end, we hope to roll out this Industry 4.0 solution to every injection molding machine our customer sells in the future worldwide.
