“App” Development Platform for Next Generation Manufacturing

The smart phone and information technology industry has stirred tremendous innovation by providing a platform (e.g. iPhone, Droid) to develop value added personal and business applications (“apps”). However, such a technology innovation was not possible in manufacturing, primarily, due to lack of universally accepted standard and closed architecture systems. However, the newly developed XML-based open MTConnect standard has been a game changing innovation for manufacturing. MTConnect can enable plug-and-play functionality and real time data from various assets in a production shop. In this presentation, we explain the development of a cloud-based MTConnect powered Shop-Talk application which provides a platform to develop value added productivity applications to achieve operation efficiency. The current apps include power monitoring, alarm management, enterprise content management, utilization monitoring and downtime analysis. The power monitoring app provides bottom-up methodology for autonomous energy consumption analytics with correlation of machining parameters and energy consumption from the lowest component features and up. The alarm management app provides customizable alarm notification with ability for user to add comments and classify the alarm according to its root cause. The enterprise content management is used to capture and organize all of the manufacturing documents including maintenance log, part programs and manuals into easy-to-find searchable electronic documents. The utilization monitor and downtime analysis enables machine, cell and shop performance monitoring with user selectable time scale for particular shift, day, week or month. Shop-Talk implementation will enable enterprises to further increase their efficiency leading to better overall performance and increased productivity essential for next generation manufacturing. The future work is concentrated on developing live value stream maps, supplier visibility, intelligent maintenance, and statistical process control apps. 

Reference:  “App” Development Platform for Next Generation Manufacturing; Amit Deshpande, Ron Pieper; Defense Manufacturing Conference 2011 (Accepted).