An iot Frame work for overall equipment effectiveness monitoring

Industries always look for ways to improve productivity, reduce losses, and increase profits. The fourth industrial revolution, termed Industry 4.0, promises to push these goals to new heights. One of the emerging technologies under Industry 4.0 is the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). IIoT refe

Project Title

An iot Frame work for overall equipment effectiveness monitoring

Project Area of Specialization

Internet of Things

Project Summary

Industries always look for ways to improve productivity, reduce losses, and increase profits. The fourth industrial revolution, termed Industry 4.0, promises to push these goals to new heights. One of the emerging technologies under Industry 4.0 is the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). IIoT refers to the interconnection of machines and devices in industrial environments. Proper implementation of the IIoT can improve the efficiency and reliability of industries. The IIoT market, valued at $115 billion in 2016, is predicted to reach $197 billion by 2023.

This project aims at developing a proof-of-concept IIoT solution to monitor overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). OEE is a measurement of how well an industrial manufacturing process performs compared to its full potential. OEE can provide insights to improve the manufacturing process by reducing losses. The real-time measurement of OEE involves using field devices to collect machine availability data, aggregate and analyze it, and provide industry owners with information to make the right decisions to improve productivity while reducing costs.

A schematic of the overall project is shown in Figure 1. Firstly, we have created an industrial environment comprising a conveyor belt-drive system. We, then, use sensors to count the total number of manufactured faulty and healthy products. An edge device (a microcontroller) reads the data from sensors placed on the conveyor belt drive system. The edge device passes this data to the IIoT server, where the OEE is calculated and displayed on the dashboard. The dashboard, and ultimately the machines' OEE, is accessible over the internet to make the IIoT system. 

Figure 1: Overall schematic of the project
 

Project Objectives

To deal with the 6 Big losses of TPM (Total Productive Maintenance), we provide a solution using OEE in this project. The project includes Interfacing with the industrial environment, with the IoT server,and visualization of processed data obtained from different machines in the industry. The purpose of the project is to build an integrated system automation between machines, performance, and information using the IoT. Objectives of the OEE monitoring with the interfacing of IoT are:

• To assess the performance of maintenance systems
• To check availability of the machine or system, production efficiency, and the quality of the production of machinery or company systems.
• To provide the Benchmark, Improvements, and Maintaining the improvements in performance, quality, and increase efficiencies in the production lines.
• To obtain Real-time data from the working machines in an industry

Project Implementation Method

This project deals with the industrial IoT framework. The hardware utilized in IoT systems mainly includes machines to be accessed or control for a remote dashboard, server, sensors, etc. Main components of implementation of this project are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Main components of the OEE system

OEE system will be implemented as follows.

• The data will be read from sensors placed on the machines will be read by the micro-controller.
• The parameters of OEE (performance, quality, and availability) will be calculated using the input data. This calculated OEE and parameters will be then passed to the server, from where these will be displayed on the dashboard.
• This dashboard and ultimately the machines are accessible over the internet to make the IoT system.

Benefits of the Project

A successful implementation of the OEE solution:

• Ensures you use existing equipment to its fullest capacity, reducing the need for investment in other areas
• Gives you a better oversight of the production process, so you understand where the real problems exist and how to prioritize them.
• Delivers significant return on investment whether you are increasing capacity, driving efficiencies, launching new products, and more.
• Helps you maintain competitiveness in the market, particularly in competitive industries like pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing.
• Improved process quality which will save you time and money as well as helping maintain your reputation in the market while also avoiding the risks and consequences of product recalls.
• Reduces machine maintenance and repair costs as you can put proper plans and schedules in place.
• Improves the scalability of your production line.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

The project has mainly three integrated parts:

• Hardware design: representing the industrial model
• Software part: it includes the programming of controller, which reads and analyze the data and calculate the OEE
• Server part and dashboard: Sending the data variables to the server and display the data on the dashboard and access the working machine.

Working of industrial model:

The industrial model, which is to be used in our project contains belt conveyors operated by the DC motor, two proximity sensors, and relays. (We have considered it as a part of complete mechanism in the industry). A prototype manufactured unit for our project is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: A prototype of conveyor belt drive system manufactured for our project

The objects on the conveyor will be differentiated according to their sizes using sensors. The objects with set sizes are of good quality products and vice versa. It has been assumed that all objects are coming from a manufacturing unit (machine) in a factory.

All the sensors, conveyors, are controlled using a micro-controller. The data relating to the availability, quality, and performance of the machine will be directly read by the micro-controller and sent aftter different required manipulations to the server for further displaying and control.

Software Part:

AN esp 8266 micro-controller is used as an edge device in the project which has also the ability to communicate with other devices or network using Wi-Fi installed on it. Arduino IDE is used for writing and compiling the code. The controller receives the real time data of sensors and calculates the different parameters of OEE simultaneously. Then this calculated OEE parameters are passed to the server for further analyzing.

Server and dashboard
We have used "Thingsboard" as our server, which is open source IoT plateform. It enables device connectivity via industry standard IoT protocols - MQTT, CoAP and HTTP and supports both cloud and on-premises deployments. ThingsBoard combines scalability, fault-tolerance and performance so you will never lose your data. Figure 4 shows the different calculated variables in the form of dashboard.

Figure 4: Implemented dashboard with OEE parameters

We have deployed the IoT network over on-premise server using this platform, which enables to access the machines, wherever placed in the industry. All information regarding the functining of machines and their outputs has made visualaized using the dashboard showing different variables.   

Final Deliverable of the Project

HW/SW integrated system

Core Industry

Manufacturing

Other Industries

Energy , Others

Core Technology

Internet of Things (IoT)

Other Technologies

Sustainable Development Goals

Decent Work and Economic Growth, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Responsible Consumption and Production

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com