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X. Chen et al.
requirement for heat treatment process. With the reduction on frequencies of heating
up furnaces, the energy consumption decreases correspondingly.
By monitoring the temperature of furnaces and amount of electricity through
sensors, which also provides information to better control of product quality, therefore
to reduce the rate of Scrap, Loss and Rework.
The system also supports on scheduling the delivery to customers with an optimized transport load and a pre-defined route, to reach a lower energy consumption
and CO 2 emission.
Process and Material Efficiency
MES, robots and a so-called Grinding Cycle Monitoring software support on
improving process and material efficiency.
MES: The Manufacturing Execution System is managing production/manufacturing efficiency, material and non-conformance. It is placed in a
layer between the Enterprise environment and shop floor. MES receives pushed
information from the Enterprise needed on the shop floor, by the machines and
operators. Meanwhile, MES also pulls data from the shop floor, which visualized
and stored as process data, for traceability reasons and customer demands.
MES monitors and visualizes the energy consumption on each single process,
which provides a good basis for observing and trouble-shooting abnormal situations,
as well as for improvement. Status of running, lack of material, buffer overflow and
others are the four machine conditions that monitored and categorized. The system
sends instant reports to corresponding operator, channel manager and maintenance
operator, in case of disturbances. It ensures that the situation will be notified and
taken care of within a short notice. With the reduction of idle running time and Mean
Time to Repair, energy and efficiency loss can also be reduced.
In addition to efficient communication, MES supports on achieving a paperless
environment. Before, it was paper attached on each pallet enabled the communication between each process, which indicated the produced pieces, the notification to
next process, and the quality issues. Nowadays, operators no longer need to register
on papers along each pallet. Along with the process, operators register and record
information directly into the system. Barcode attached on each pallet tells the details
along the whole process of this batch of products by a single scan.
Robots: Fast resetting, stable quality and higher efficiency motivated the use of
robots. Robots can replace heavy and repetitive work tasks with higher and stable
efficiency and quality, which leads to lower risk of scrap loss and reworks and higher
energy efficiency. It results in a lower environmental load per product by avoiding
unnecessary use of energy and waste of material.
Grinding Cycle Monitoring: It is a system to identify improvement potentials
by monitoring grinding cycles, which enables reduction of processing time of each
cycle without compromising quality. There are four stages of each grinding cycle,
where the first stage has the biggest potential to be shortened, as it is the period when
the grinding tool approaches the work-piece. Grinding Cycle Monitoring helps to
identify the positions of grinding tool and work-piece, as the distance between the
two can be different due to the variety of parameters from incoming work-pieces.
X. Chen et al.
requirement for heat treatment process. With the reduction on frequencies of heating
up furnaces, the energy consumption decreases correspondingly.
By monitoring the temperature of furnaces and amount of electricity through
sensors, which also provides information to better control of product quality, therefore
to reduce the rate of Scrap, Loss and Rework.
The system also supports on scheduling the delivery to customers with an optimized transport load and a pre-defined route, to reach a lower energy consumption
and CO 2 emission.
Process and Material Efficiency
MES, robots and a so-called Grinding Cycle Monitoring software support on
improving process and material efficiency.
MES: The Manufacturing Execution System is managing production/manufacturing efficiency, material and non-conformance. It is placed in a
layer between the Enterprise environment and shop floor. MES receives pushed
information from the Enterprise needed on the shop floor, by the machines and
operators. Meanwhile, MES also pulls data from the shop floor, which visualized
and stored as process data, for traceability reasons and customer demands.
MES monitors and visualizes the energy consumption on each single process,
which provides a good basis for observing and trouble-shooting abnormal situations,
as well as for improvement. Status of running, lack of material, buffer overflow and
others are the four machine conditions that monitored and categorized. The system
sends instant reports to corresponding operator, channel manager and maintenance
operator, in case of disturbances. It ensures that the situation will be notified and
taken care of within a short notice. With the reduction of idle running time and Mean
Time to Repair, energy and efficiency loss can also be reduced.
In addition to efficient communication, MES supports on achieving a paperless
environment. Before, it was paper attached on each pallet enabled the communication between each process, which indicated the produced pieces, the notification to
next process, and the quality issues. Nowadays, operators no longer need to register
on papers along each pallet. Along with the process, operators register and record
information directly into the system. Barcode attached on each pallet tells the details
along the whole process of this batch of products by a single scan.
Robots: Fast resetting, stable quality and higher efficiency motivated the use of
robots. Robots can replace heavy and repetitive work tasks with higher and stable
efficiency and quality, which leads to lower risk of scrap loss and reworks and higher
energy efficiency. It results in a lower environmental load per product by avoiding
unnecessary use of energy and waste of material.
Grinding Cycle Monitoring: It is a system to identify improvement potentials
by monitoring grinding cycles, which enables reduction of processing time of each
cycle without compromising quality. There are four stages of each grinding cycle,
where the first stage has the biggest potential to be shortened, as it is the period when
the grinding tool approaches the work-piece. Grinding Cycle Monitoring helps to
identify the positions of grinding tool and work-piece, as the distance between the
two can be different due to the variety of parameters from incoming work-pieces.