By Niraj M Wanikar, Chief Editor, CNCTimes.com, 2017-08-01 15:57:00

CNC

Industry 4.0 – some applications in a shop floor

Once you have a basic machine monitoring system in place in the factory, you can do a variety of things with the data that is collected automatically. Some examples:

Production and productivity monitoring
You can track production quantities on every machine, and generate reports for personal or show them on Andon boards. You can get alerts on a mobile phone/email if the production is below target. You can track downtime durations and their reasons, and generate reports that help in analysing the causes and reducing them. You can get alerts if the machine is idle for a long time, or if the downtime is too high on a particular shift. You can track rejection and rework quantities, and get alerts if rejection levels are too high. You can track and improve OEE, A, P, Q.

Pic. source: http://www.maxop.com

Material ordering
A machine production monitoring system directly tracks production from the machine. Purchase software can use this data to update the available raw material, and automatically reorder material when the raw material reduces down to the reorder quantity.

Part traceability
You can include part traceability in the production monitoring system. Each part raw material (casting, forging, etc.) has unique serial numbers engraved on it as a bar code or QR code. The operator reads this code using an electronic reader before loading each part. The production monitoring system saves this code against each part, so you have a record of the date and time of production of each part and its serial number. This is stored in a database and can be retrieved any time in the future.

Connection to Scheduling
When a part is scheduled for manufacture, often the actual production is very different from the schedule. The reasons for the deviation could be any of these: raw material shortage, the operator on sick leave, machine breakdown, power outage, accident. What you think is happening can be very different from what is actually happening, because there is no direct feedback from the machines.
Solution: Track production on the machines directly with a monitoring system, and get the scheduling software to pick up the production quantities from the monitoring system. The scheduling software then relies on this data to decide batch completion dates, machine availability, etc.

Maintenance
You can track the running time of the machine and condition of various parts, generate reports and alerts for preventive and predictive maintenance. You can track maintenance efficiency parameters like MTTA, MTTR and MTBF.

Cadem LEANworks Cloud is a system that monitors machine production and productivity. You can get any other software (like ERP, scheduling, purchase, etc.) to pick up data from LEANworks’ database to perform a variety of other functions automatically. LEANworks cloud is plug-and-play, which means you can get it up and running in minutes, and does not require extensive customization or long installation.

CAD/CAM software, CNC Program Simulation, Machine monitoring, CNC Training software

Etc

Cicadas – loud mouths of the forest

I happened to be living in the middle of a forest for a few days some time ago, and my neighbours happened to be a particularly noisy bunch of cicadas. Cicadas are cryptic, which means they have the ability to avoid being detected (and eaten) by other animals. My bunch definitely were very cryptic. In all the time that I was there, I never saw even one of them in spite of trying my best.

Pic. source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada

Male cicadas sing to attract females, and the females then respond. The females (like in humans ?) prefer the loud mouths to the strong silent guys. The singing is actually a sound made by drum-like organs in their abdomens. They do their singing at night, to avoid being caught by predators. A few members of my gang violated this rule and were singing during the day time too (that’s the equivalent of a human staying awake all night and singing). The average law-abiding member of the gang, of course, did the singing at night.

Here’re cicada sounds that I recorded:
Cicadas at dusk
Duet of Cicadas and Frogs

I read on the www that the loudest species of cicadas can sing at 110 decibels, which is a car horn at 1 m. distance, or live rock music.

Cicadas represent carefree living and immortality in myths in various cultures. I’m not sure about the carefree and immortal part, but they definitely represent loud living.

• Follow @CNCTimes