The diagram shows a typical scheme for e-F@ctory which can be implemented and adapted as per the requirements of the End-User for varied industry verticals.
Maintenance has an instantaneous view on the health and efficiency of the equipment, providing support in troubleshooting and scheduling maintenance or repair. Effective predictive maintenance can be realised using intelligent sensors to get feedback for corrective measures and also to predict the next maintenance cycle realising optimal resource usage.
With the help of connected applications in the manufacturing operations management domain, the full scope of ISA-95 functionality becomes available; ranging from production operations, through quality and maintenance operations, to inventory operations and providing production control to operations managers. Within the Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) domains, the transparency assists in many ways. A good example of this would be how it enables planners to determine the liberty to adapt production plans to demand variations and analyse supply chain performance.
The e-F@ctory platform scales extremely well. It can be used for monitoring, operation and maintenance of a single equipment instance, fulfilling the same function for a distributed network of machines and equipment, but also for production assets of several lines, factories or sites, that can be considered to be a ‘production cloud'. It can feed local IT applications, for example a line-specific MES, as well as complex software applications globally coordinating operations, such as in the case of ERP or SCM. It can be used to create very lean as well as very elaborate systems, adapting to companies' priorities and needs. The platform is ready for extensions of the network to connected products, as well as to a supply chain network linking production, logistics, service providers, clients, and other stakeholders through wired and wireless connections that IIoT generates.
MC Works64 - the SCADA solution from Mitsubishi Electric is seamlessly compatible to the e-F@ctory concept and it can provide small or Big Data coming from wide range of equipment to analytics is a fast growing domain and applications like AX Energy, AX Quality, AX Facility etc. can benefit the industries in decision making to improve the overall efficiency and productivity. Basic analytics like MC Historian provide graphical representations of historical information with context, enabling fast understanding and decision-making. The next level applications are capable of forecasting and enabling proactive measures. The ultimate level is providing recommendations on how to run the process or the equipment, to fulfil production goals best.
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