A Tower of Babel has been plaguing the manufacturing world for decades, threatening access to a modern day god: data.
And now there may be a solution.
Bottom line, in the manufacturing world (unlike in IT), the computers that operate the machines on the shop floor don’t speak the same language – and getting them to understand each other can cost manufacturing businesses huge amounts of money.
In fact, sometimes the cost of integration has been so great that manufacturers have made do with old technology.
Part of the reason for this lack of a standard form of communication is the tendency of technology firms to want to keep their products secret, for reasons of competitive advantage.
The result has been a major problem for manufacturers.
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“Every time we got a new system in any way, shape or form … nothing would talk to each other,” said Red Heitkamp, director of advanced manufacturing at New Brighton-based Remmele Engineering Inc. “No. 1 is cost and the other part of this that was really negative was that it kept people from buying technologies.”
Not anymore – perhaps.
The trade group that represents the machine tool industry, the Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT), has asked researchers at the University of Berkeley and Georgia Tech to develop software that will enable manufacturing machines to talk with each other in the same language.
What they are developing is a communication software called MTConnect or Manufacturing Technology Connectivity. And at the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago in September, technology vendors will showcase products layered with MTConnect for the first time.
Experts agree that if MTConnect is widely adopted, the software could provide significant efficiencies both in cost and process for manufacturing businesses.
Refining the software – getting it just right – is expected to cost about $2 million over the next two years, said Paul Warndorf, vice president of technology at AMT.
Here’s how it all works.
Modern machine tools are driven by CNC controllers – computer numerical controllers – that command the movements of machines and other control functions. Every time users need to get information about how a machine is doing, they need to talk to the controller in the distinct language of that specific controller. And since each vendor or model of controller speaks a different language, the only way to get data from multiple machines is to install custom software. That makes data-gathering an expensive and burdensome task.
Enter MTConnect – a software translator of sorts that knows multiple vendor-specific languages and can talk to every machine on the shop floor and glean data from each.
Ultimately, manufacturing companies like Remmele Engineering who make and sell parts can apply MTConnect to develop a centralized control room from which they can obtain data across the entire manufacturing operation. That is the promise of MTConnect.
And it could not have arrived a moment sooner.
The manufacturing industry loses significant amounts of money because of this lack of communicating ability. In fact, a 1999 U.S. Department of Commerce study that looked at the problem only in the automotive industry found that lack cost manufacturers $1 billion in one year. (A more updated number reflecting the whole industry could not be determined.)
Take Remmele Engineering, for example, which makes parts for a variety of industries including electronics, defense systems, aerospace, medical devices, and semiconductor equipment.
A few years ago the company decided to try and get outside help to find a custom software solution to get better data out of a particular milling machine. They were told it would cost between $10,000 and $20,000, which was too expensive for Remmele Engineering, said Bill Blomquist, senior developer at the firm. The value of the pieces of manufacturing equipment the firm has ranges from $300,000 to $3 million.
So it’s worth it for Remmele to find software that will allow its machines to talk with each other – and capture data in real time. As a result, Blomquist and Heitkamp are both looking forward to seeing how MTConnect-compliant products work at the IMTS show in Chicago from Sept.8-13.
“(Now) we cannot make decisions on a process as it happens and we have to just argue about whether it was a good process or is the machine laboring too much and making unnecessary moves – and this is all opinion,” Blomquist says. “When you have unambiguous data, there is no arguing.”
So why has it taken until 2008 for a standard to start emerging that many believe could be widely adopted?
“Because in the machine tool industry everybody was more inclined to have their own secrets … and they held them as trade secrets,” Heitkamp said.
ATM’s Warndorf doesn’t disagree.
“Our industry is one which was very much a cottage industry and everybody had their own products and techniques for doing things, so therefore we could never get everybody together to do this,” Warndorf said.
Not everyone agrees the long delay was due to technology vendors wanting to keep things secret.
John Turner is manager of CNC engineering and solutions at GE Fanuc, a joint venture between General Electric and Fanuc in Japan; GE Fanuc is the largest seller of CNC controls to users. And Turner believes standards did not gather steam in the past because one group or the other had more to gain – typically, one technology vendor would be pushing its standards on the whole industry.
“(With MTConnect, the effort) is being driven by an industry organization that has nothing really to gain out of it other than for the overall benefit of its members,” Turner said. “So it’s not one-sided.”
The September IMTS show will allow technology users to view how equipment works in an MTConnect environment. Warndorf of AMT said attendees can come up to a kiosk area with touch screens and get data from equipment both stationed at the show and in remote locations.
“It’s proof of concept,” Warndorf said.
Heitkamp acknowledges it may be too early to estimate the cost-savings that MTConnect will bring, but he believes it will be significant. He’s also cautiously optimistic that the standard will be widely adopted.
“This is catching speed faster than anybody thought it would,” Heitkamp said.