Connectivity for Machine Tools: Analytics for Improved Utilization

Brad Klippstein:

Hi, my name is Brad Klippstein. I'm the Controls Product Specialist here at Okuma. Today, I have with me, my colleague

Casey Croussore:

Casey Croussore. I'm a Principal Engineer for a software and factory automation product here at Okuma.

Brad Klippstein:

Today, we're here to talk to you about connectivity. We're going to be talking to you about how we actually connect our machines to your local network, with our hardware and our software, MTConnect. We're going to talk about data collection and how you go about the process of actually physically connecting your machines in your shop to that network. We're going to talk to you about what tags, what data is collected from those machines. And then we're going to talk about an example that we have available for you for collecting that data and visualizing it on a dashboard. So this dashboard that you see behind me is called Connect Plan. And we'll get into some of the details about that today. But first let's talk about how you actually connect that machine to that network. So we're going to bring Casey over in the back of one of our machines and show you the process that we go through for physically connecting that machine.

Casey Croussore:

Once you have run your ethernet cables to the location of your machine, what you need to do is locate the LAN connector here, this environmentally protected pass through connector, and just run your ethernet cable through here.

Casey Croussore:

Okay, once you have run your ethernet cable to the machine, it's really easy. Every machine includes an inline coupler here that will connect your network to the PC on the control. So locate that, connect your cable, and you're done.

Brad Klippstein:

Thanks Casey, that was great. So now you see how easy it is to physically connect the machine to your network. We went in the back and just plugged in that ethernet cable, very quick and easy. Now we're on to actually setting up the software on the actual machine using MTConnect and then setting our IP address right on the machine. So the first part of that, the MTConnect portion of that, that allows you to collect the information from the machine and then put it into a format that's man-readable to some kind of dashboard system. That's great because MTConnect is standard on every machine that we offer. That comes pre-installed straight from the factory. So it's nothing that you have to download or install or worry about. All you have to do is activate it. The second part of that is setting the actual IP address. So that is pretty quick and easy to do as well. So I'm going to have Casey explain how you actually go about doing that. Casey?

Casey Croussore:

Yeah, nothing special here, it's a Windows computer. You set the IP address the same way that you would on a desktop computer. So when you're using an MTConnect, you're almost always going to be using a fixed IP address that your IT department has determined, or your OT department, set it here, set the subnet mask in the gateway, and that's all you need to do.

Brad Klippstein:

Great, so along with your IT group, they're going to give you those numbers, the IP address, the sub-net, the gateway, if you need all of that, to set that properly at the machine, right?

Casey Croussore:

That's correct.

Brad Klippstein:

Awesome. And now that next part about MTConnect. How would you go about setting that up on the machine?

Casey Croussore:

So, it's already installed and running from the factory. It's not actually collecting data or transmitting data until you make a couple of configuration changes. So, bring up the MTConnect adapter, and the first thing you need to do, you're going to go to the configuration tab and check "enable monitoring tags". At that point, the adapter will respond to requests and provide data.

Brad Klippstein:

So what are a couple of those tags? What is this information that we're actually pulling from the machine?

Casey Croussore:

So it's "productivity data" and "machine status." It'll tell you the current alarm, it'll tell you whether a machine is running, program name, part count... Things like that.

Brad Klippstein:

So tooling information. What tool I'm running, what that offset is, what the wear of that tool will be.

Casey Croussore:

Correct.

Brad Klippstein:

Great. That's awesome, Casey. Alright, thank you for that.

Brad Klippstein:

So next we'd like to show you an example of some dashboard software to actually collect this information. So now we've got it physically connected to your network. We're all set with the software side of this. Now we're actually going to show you an example of pulling that information from the machine and then taking it to a dashboard to view this information, because you wouldn't just want to view these tags as these types of files, right?

Casey Croussore:

Right, that would be almost meaningless.

Brad Klippstein:

Right, not man-readable. So let's show you some software that you can use to view this information in a productive manner.

Brad Klippstein:

Now, we're going to show you an example of Okuma's monitoring software called Connect Plan. So that's what you see here in the screen behind myself and Casey. We've actually physically connected all of the machines here at our Partners in THINC facility to this dashboard software. So what you're seeing is all of our machines connected to the system and pulling data, okay? And it's a really nice system and dashboard to use. It's very interactive, intuitive, and it contains a ton of useful information about all of the machines across your shop floor. So productivity, maintenance items, alarm status, operation history are all things that are visualized here in this dashboard software. Casey, could you tell us if there's any limit to the number of users that can access this information?

Casey Croussore:

No. So there's no limit to the number of users once the product is running on your network. It's accessed through a browser, so as many PCs necessary can connect to it.

Brad Klippstein:

So you're saying I can just access that anywhere, right from my phone?

Casey Croussore:

Yep.

Brad Klippstein:

Right?

Casey Croussore:

That's correct. You can get it on your phone and your desktop PC in your office, anything like that.

Brad Klippstein:

That's great. Is there any limitation to the types of machines or devices that you can connect to this software?

Casey Croussore:

Not really. So the Okumas are especially easy to connect because obviously we designed both ends of that.

Brad Klippstein:

Right.

Casey Croussore:

But we can connect to other OEMs machines.

Brad Klippstein:

That's great. So it looks great just here on the screen, but could you maybe walk us through some of the features that are included in this Connect Plan software?

Casey Croussore:

Sure, we can do that. So, you start off with the factory overview. So, this is intended to look really good and give you an instant heads-up display of what your machines are doing. Then we have various means of dashboarding the data. And part of the intent behind Connect Plan is that it's simple, it's easy-to-read displays that don't take a lot of training for your users.

Casey Croussore:

We can see machine status over time...

Brad Klippstein:

So that's green, yellow, red, the operating percentage, or the amount of time that that machine is actually in production?

Casey Croussore:

Exactly correct. The operating history of another way of displaying the data.

Brad Klippstein:

Okay. So what are we seeing here? We can see basically why a machine is down or what could potentially be the reason that machine is not producing parts?

Casey Croussore:

That's correct. You can see the downtime reasons here...

Brad Klippstein:

That's great.

Casey Croussore:

And it's charted over time.

Casey Croussore:

And on this screen, it's basically the same data, the downtime reasons, but it's charted as a percentage of a 24 hour period as opposed to individual number of minutes.

Brad Klippstein:

So we can see the data what's going on today on the shop floor, or I see a little calendar up there for displaying the time or the date. We can go back in history and see what we have run last week, last month...

Casey Croussore:

Sure.

Brad Klippstein:

Basically, unlimited.

Casey Croussore:

Yeah, that's correct. For as long as you have been recording the data, you can go back and look.

Brad Klippstein:

That's great. And then I see maintenance up there. Would you talk a little bit about what that is?

Casey Croussore:

Sure. The, especially for the Okumas, we have an interface to the onboard maintenance recording system, and we can see when maintenance items are coming due and it's color coded. So if you see the maintenance item is in yellow, it means you're within about 25% of the allowed time. And you're going to need to go perform that maintenance item and you can program these on the machine and then you can see all of them here on Connect Plan.

Brad Klippstein:

So you could say that this is taking the steps to implement some type of predictive or preventative maintenance system with the tools that you already have on the shop floor. It's just pulling that information straight from the OSP control.

Casey Croussore:

Sure, it definitely can tell you when you're going to need to perform any form of preventive maintenance.

Brad Klippstein:

Thanks for your time today. Great job, Casey. Really appreciate you walking us through the entire process of connecting the machines here on the board.

Casey Croussore:

Thanks Brad, I appreciate it.

Brad Klippstein:

And thank you for watching today. Thanks for joining us. And if there're any questions that you may have about something that we didn't cover, please feel free to ask away. Thanks for your time.