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The Digital Manufacturing Design Innovation Institute (DMDII) recently announced a project seeking proposals for developing the “Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) Retrofit Kit for Legacy Manufacturing”. The scope of the project is solely focused on developing an economical retrofit kit to integrate the installed base of machine tools in production plants to the digital thread. This is a reasonably tall order considering that that the useful life of a machine tool is on the order of 15 to 25 years. And there are certainly some instances where machines are over 50 years old. On the other hand, it represents a huge opportunity to benefit from modernizing and digitizing the manufacturing stock. ARC’s estimation is that there are over 4.5 million machine tools installed in plants throughout the globe today, and less than 20 percent are connected in a secure manner to the enterprise. Moreover, many machine tools that are connected today rely on a proprietary interface, proprietary hardware platform, and are closed systems. The DMDII project call is seeking a solution based on widely accepted standards.
Since the project is primarily intended to benefit US manufacturers, the project call intimates that employing the MT-Connect standard would be preferred. MT-Connect is the only standard that has been employed in the machine tool industry that has incorporated an object model that is specifically suited to machine tool applications. MT-Connect does not preclude an OPC based solution, but the two options can coexist. But, the choice of using a standard protocol is an important consideration in context of a digital enterprise. For example, a specific requirement is that,
“The retrofit should facilitate feedback enabling improved machine control, performance improvement and optimization at local and enterprise levels. For example, the system should be able to provide information, analysis, or control signals to either the machine or the operator.”
This requirement is a directive that will close the loop in the manufacturing process. For the most part, machine tool operators will be required act upon the information. If MT-Connect is incorporated this protocol is restricted to a Read Only communication, so a fully digital thread cannot be deployed. However, a secure connection that leverages a standard industrial protocol is a tremendous leap in the machine tool sector. The majority of manufacturers will benefit from tackling the process problems that have been hidden from either management or process engineers.
It will be very interesting to see how far reaching the proposals are in terms of implementing an IIoT ecosystem. The mandate is very clear. The goal is simply to get machines connected economically with a gateway that can be purchased between $500 to $1,000. An even taller order is to develop an ecosystem comprised of cognitive learning algorithms that can identify patterns to assist manufacturers in improving production performance. However, this is a great start as more machines are connected, increasingly more production data can be shared in the Cloud to identify best practices. The possibilities are unlimited. The Call for Proposals can be found at DMDII 1-02 IIoT Retrofit Kit for Legacy Manufacturing. I'll blog about this from time to time as the project develops, because this could be the basis for improvements in your manufacturing operation.
Since the project is primarily intended to benefit US manufacturers, the project call intimates that employing the MT-Connect standard would be preferred. MT-Connect is the only standard that has been employed in the machine tool industry that has incorporated an object model that is specifically suited to machine tool applications. MT-Connect does not preclude an OPC based solution, but the two options can coexist. But, the choice of using a standard protocol is an important consideration in context of a digital enterprise. For example, a specific requirement is that,
“The retrofit should facilitate feedback enabling improved machine control, performance improvement and optimization at local and enterprise levels. For example, the system should be able to provide information, analysis, or control signals to either the machine or the operator.”
This requirement is a directive that will close the loop in the manufacturing process. For the most part, machine tool operators will be required act upon the information. If MT-Connect is incorporated this protocol is restricted to a Read Only communication, so a fully digital thread cannot be deployed. However, a secure connection that leverages a standard industrial protocol is a tremendous leap in the machine tool sector. The majority of manufacturers will benefit from tackling the process problems that have been hidden from either management or process engineers.
It will be very interesting to see how far reaching the proposals are in terms of implementing an IIoT ecosystem. The mandate is very clear. The goal is simply to get machines connected economically with a gateway that can be purchased between $500 to $1,000. An even taller order is to develop an ecosystem comprised of cognitive learning algorithms that can identify patterns to assist manufacturers in improving production performance. However, this is a great start as more machines are connected, increasingly more production data can be shared in the Cloud to identify best practices. The possibilities are unlimited. The Call for Proposals can be found at DMDII 1-02 IIoT Retrofit Kit for Legacy Manufacturing. I'll blog about this from time to time as the project develops, because this could be the basis for improvements in your manufacturing operation.