Challenges
When companies work towards improving production transparency and performance, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is a commonly used, standard metric in manufacturing.
Data collection and evaluation for OEE calculations is not a trivial task. Typically for brownfield investments, implementing a smart solution for previously installed robust and expensive machines is a difficult task. Connecting existing sensors to the network, installing new sensors and the integration of all these measured data into the MES system takes several years, not to mention the substantial costs.
Basic concept
However, performance monitoring systems need only know the status of the manufacturing machine: is it working or not? This information is not obvious when the loading of semi-finished products and finished goods requires human resources. The Sunstone platform solves this problem based on positioning and vibration data.
The Sunstone platform provides a solution to compute availability, a key parameter of OEE. As a practical matter, this involves measuring the assembly cycles and machine downtime.
Solution
Measured data is divided into two main groups:
- based on position
- based on acceleration
In this case, TAGs are typically fixed to semi-finished products to track them through the production process. As a result, they provide information about how much time each product has spent at a particular station.
By analysing the acceleration (vibration) data of TAGs that are typically placed on manufacturing machines, it can be shown that the given device is working or not. However, it’s important to note that the design of these measurements is always based on the unique machine.