TREND #3: The Marriage of IT and Production
There was a time, not so long ago, when the IT and production sides of a manufacturing business were safely tucked away into their own departments. Just five to 10 years ago, AMT’s Woods reminds us, any notion of convergence between the two was a foreign concept—there simply wasn’t anywhere for the two to meet.
“Now,” he says, “not only are they coming together, but they’re starting to be woven seamlessly, and the tapestry that is coming out of it is going to start being the major differentiator in U.S. manufacturing.”
This trend will emerge clearly at IMTS 2012, demonstrated in hi-res visualization monitors, data displays and endless hardware and software offerings.
Mazak, for example, will be demonstrating 22 machines at IMTS and each one will be MTConnect-compliant, allowing them to capture, communicate and report vital production data that would have been lost in traditional machines.
MTConnect is the communication standard for equipment interoperability across all types of devices and equipment used in machining and manufacturing technology.
The potential for this marriage of IT and machine tools is evident in systems like Mazak’s Hyper Quadrex 250MSY multitasking turning center, which features a bar feeder that communicates as a united system using MTConnect’s open communication protocol.
“The whole machine and the bar feeder work together as an integral system,” says Brian Papke, Mazak president. “The whole package, the whole system is capable of being monitored for its utilization and productivity.”
As his machine offerings demonstrate, Papke says the MTConnect standard is gaining momentum among machine shops and manufacturers, regardless of the markets they supply.
“It really doesn’t know any boundaries in terms of industries,” he says. “Whether you’re in aerospace, defense, energy, automotive, medical, construction equipment or anything else, there is someone in each segment of these industries that has moved into MTConnect.”
The advantage for these companies, he says, is better access to critical performance data that can help increase productivity and lower costs.
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“When you look at machine tools today, everybody focuses on uptime of machines,” he says. In the current state of the technology in terms of reliability, those uptimes can be over 98%. But that number doesn’t tell the whole story, he says.
“You’ve also got to consider how much time is actually available for chip cutting and how much is actually used for chip cutting,” he says. That time is a much smaller amount among most manufacturers. As much as 20% less.
MTConnect reveals those kinds of insights and can help machining operations keep their spindles turning more efficiently, and with greater yields, says AMT’s Vice President of Manufacturing Technology Paul Warndorf
“The average is about 20% utilization improvement for companies implementing MTConnect because now they have been able to actually understand what’s going on with the equipment and with their shop floor,” he says.
These kinds of results are pushing MTConnect compliance through the industry, with over 100 organizations already in the loop.
“From a builder’s standpoint, some of the largest machine tool developers in the world are making it a feature that is available in their machines,” he says. “There is a lot of new equipment coming out with it built in.”
To demonstrate this growing trend, the MTConnect booth at the IMTS Emerging Technology Center will feature a touch screen display to demonstrate how data are picked up from machines at the show, and will even incorporate a low level of reporting of that data.
In other words, Wardorf says, the touchscreen display will highlight not only the fact that you can get data, but what you can do with it.
“We’re trying now to say not only is the standard there and not only are there devices that can produce data, but now there are companies that utilize that data for reporting and monitoring purposes,” he says.
