Page 6 - Industrial Technology EXTRA - 6th April 2020

SMART MANUFACRTURING... Mitsubishi Electric

Talking heads manage a far higher volume of data. This requires the
In the past the IT and OT worlds have not been creation of a platform for efficient data analytics and
natural bed fellows with the OT world operating in data transfer between the OT and IT levels. The
real time with process speeds of milliseconds or challenge is to handle all that data in a structured
below and the IT world operating at much longer way, filtering out unnecessary “noise” and turning
sampling times, such minutes, hours or more. There “Data” into “Information”.
has been a natural divide between these two worlds Not losing sight of our goal to become a smart
but the advent of Edge computing technology to sit in manufacturing plant, performing analysis on this data
the “space” between the two has made the will provide the ability to visualise all the important
integration of these seemingly diverse worlds much aspects of production: OEE (Overall Equipment
more straight forward and allowed a greater level of Effectiveness), productivity, quality control, use of raw
choice about where data analysis takes place. materials, waste and predictive and preventative
It is easy to assume that if the necessary levels of maintenance, all of which are very familiar to
automation and network infrastructure on plant either production directors tasked with making the operation
already exists or now exists as phase one of our more efficient. The question is often “where best to
implementation plan to become smart, the natural implement our data analytics?” Is it best to move
extension of this is to just collect every byte of data everything to enterprise level servers or even the
that it is possible to collect and sit back and admire cloud, or is there an alternative?
what has been achieved. Of course the new smart technology appearing at
Of course it needs to be more scientific than that. the “Edge” not only gives an alternative but greater
Inevitably, increased communication in recording flexibility and efficiency of data management. Edge
those machine ‘conversations’ will create the need to computing offers industrialised solutions designed to
live in the plant environment like all other automation
equipment and to be at the “sharp end” of the data
collection process. As previously discussed, the IT
and OT worlds are often divided by the frequency at
which data is sampled but Edge solutions offer the

6 April 2020 • INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY EXTRA! • p6