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Smarten Up

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April 2016, Machine Metrics | Quality, Kip Hanson

When I started on the shop foor, machine tools were dumb. Communication levels weren’t determined by protocols or baud rates but by which machinist could yell the loudest. NC programs were loaded from paper tape, tool offsets made with a hammer, and part quality results recorded on handwritten forms.

What a change a few decades make. Today’s technology allows shops to monitor virtually every aspect of production, from what tools were changed yesterday to how many minutes the spindles sat idle last week to what jobs are running on which machines right now. So much has changed, in fact, that some say the next industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0, is upon us.

Getting everyone on the same page

One proponent of this revolution is David McPhail, president of industrial communications platform provider Memex Inc., in Burlington, ON, who counts Mazak Corp. among key global customers for the company’s flagship product, Merlin. McPhail points to data driven manufacturing and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) as two examples of the technology companies can leverage to improve productivity and part quality, if only they have the will to overcome fear of the unknown.

“Change of any kind is hard, especially when people don’t understand the technology behind it,” he says. “But when someone thinks to themselves, ‘if I don’t do anything, then there’s no risk,’ it brings about the worst kind of paralysis. Manufacturing companies must learn to embrace technology if they are to gain a competitive advantage.”

Those advantages are numerous. Lights out production, shorter lead times, improved tool life—the list goes on. One often-overlooked benefit of integrated machine communication is better part quality, says McPhail.

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The Three “A”s of MTConnect – the Adapter, Agent and Application

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Dave Edstrom, CTO of MEMEX Inc., explains the three “A”s of MTConnect in his blog.

As the former President and Chairman of the Board of the MTConnect Institute, I have given this 10 minute presentation countless number of times to explain the Three “A”s of MTConnect – the Adapter, Agent and Application.

As a reminder, MTConnect is the open, royalty-free manufacturing communications protocol which fosters greater interoperability between manufacturing devices and software. The MTConnect standard provides connectivity and the capability to monitor and then harvest data from the entire production floor: machines, cells, devices, and processes. The standard makes this possible, because it’s based on XML and HTTP Internet technology for real-time data sharing.

The adapter is the piece of software and/or hardware that sits between the device itself, such as a machine tool, sensor, compressor, any MTConnect enabled device, and the agent.  The adapter needs to speak the specific language that the device understands and then convert that to SHDR (Simple Hierarchical Data Representation – a simple time stamped human readable stream separated by “|” symbols as delimiters.  The information is sent continuously from the device to the adapter and then to the agent. Please note that the SHDR protocol is not officially part of the MTConnect spec, but in reality, almost all of the adapters use SHDR to speak to the reference agent. The reference agent is the agent that is out at http://github.com/MTConnect that almost all of the implementations out there today use as their agent.

The agent can be thought of as a simple web server that on one side talks to the adapter and the other side talks to applications.  The agent is what translates the SHDR and makes it available in MTConnect (XML) format via http (how you access any webpage on the web today such as ESPN.com). The agent responds to simple commands from the apps or applications such as probe, current, sample or asset as examples.  The agent has a circular buffer for storing the data that is coming from the adapter.  Typically this is about 10 minutes of data.

The app or applications can be anything that wants to get information from the agent on what the MTConnect enabled device is doing.  Typically, the app is a shop floor monitoring app such as MERLIN.  Apps query the agent and typically store that information into a database as well as make that info available in dashboards, reports, email alerts and countless other ways.

I think these 10 minutes should give you a very nice overview of how MTConnect works and a deeper dive on what happens under the covers for MTConnect with the Adapter, Agent and Application.

As I stated in the webcast, you can learn more here

To view Dave Edstrom’s blog, please click here.

Thank you Gaurav!

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On Tuesday April 21, 2015, we were able to thank and recognize or software developer co-op student at Memex Automation, Gaurav Chaudhari, from the University of Waterloo.

Gaurav is very bright and a gifted software developer who worked for us this past winter in a full time co-op position as a software developer.  In the months that Gaurav was with the Memex Software Development Team, he managed to work on a number of important projects for us.  Gaurav helped create and develop software for our future MERLIN 3.0 Manufacturing Execution System (MES) platform in a number of areas, including the auto report scheduler, dashboard utilities, visual job queue, slide show and job editor.

We want to thank Gaurav for his outstanding work and we wish him all the best!

Love from,

The Memex Team

Gaurav02Gaurav, with his special Memex Automation memento, for all the hard work he put in.

Gaurav01In Recognition of Outstanding Software Development, Presented to Gaurav Chaudhari 2015

Gaurav03The Development Team took Gaurav out to a celebratory lunch.
Looks like they had a great time!

Cisco Joined MTConnect as a Technical Advisor Group Member in March 2015

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Dave Edstrom, CTO Memex Automation, blogs about the good news of Cisco joining MTConnect as a technical advisor.

This is GREAT news for MTConnect and the world of manufacturing!

Image result for cisco logo image

Note: I received permission from Cisco to both use their logo and and to state Cisco joined MTConnect.

Cisco’s Bryce Barnes is also presenting at [MC]2 2015 and below is from the MTConnect Conference web page.

MTConnect: Connecting Manufacturing Conference, April 28-30, 2015 — McCormick Place, Chicago, IL

Making the IOT a Reality and the Role of MTConnect

“Cisco leads the world in networking technology and coined the term the Internet of Things (IoT). Cisco CEO John Chambers has stated that the IoT market will generate an astounding $14 trillion in value over the next decade. As a September 2014 Network World article stated, “IoT is the intelligent connectivity of smart devices, expected to drive massive gains in efficiency, business growth and quality of life. In other words, when objects can sense each other and communicate, it changes how and where and who makes decisions about our physical world.” MTConnect is an enabling technology for IoT in manufacturing. Cisco as a new member of the MTConnect Institute is looking to participate in the rapidly growing community of Machine Builders and manufacturers who find tremendous value in the MTConnect model. In this talk, Bryce Barnes will discuss Cisco’s IoT and manufacturing vision, real life examples of IoT, and the value of MTConnect to manufacturing in this rapidly converging world of connected things.”

To view Dave Edstrom’s blog, please click here.

Thank you James!

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All the employees at Memex Automation would like to take a minute to thank and recognize our very first software developer co-op student, James Li, from the University of Waterloo.

James started for us this past fall in a full time co-op position as a software developer.  In the months that James was with the Memex Software Development Team, he managed to work on number of critical projects for us. James setup a new world-class continuous testing environment, created a configuration and capacity testing tool for MERLIN that allows us to properly gauge unlimited workloads as well as wrote numerous pieces of software for our future MERLIN 3.0 Manufacturing Executive System (MES) platform such as security modules, software metric widgets and many other impressive pieces of software.  Not only did he complete every task he was given ahead of schedule, but these assignments were extremely well designed and well written, and he did so with such enthusiasm that it was an absolute joy to have him on our team.

James Li is a talented young man and we very proud to say he was our first co-op student at Memex Automation!

We wish James all the best!  (And sincerely hope that he comes back full time!)

Love from,
The Memex Team

IMG_2076James, with his special Memex Automation memento, for all the hard work he put in.

IMG_2074In Recognition of Outstanding Software Development, Presented to James Li

IMG_2072The Development Team took James out to a celebratory lunch.
Looks like they had a great time!