Industry 4.0, the digital meeting with the factory!

Today, with Industry 4.0, the digital twin is a reality. Here we are not simply talking about a digital model (3D representation of the product or the factory), but rather of mixing in real time data from the company’s information systems which model the data of the Product and the industrial process. and data from the physical systems of the plant from operators, controllers, warehouses or even from the Product itself. All this is now possible thanks to the power and connectivity of IoT platforms such as PTC’s Thingworx, recognized as the best on the market.

Indeed, on the one hand, it makes it possible to connect all the information systems that constitute the digital continuity of the company’s repository:

• CRM: Customer management system
• PLM: Management system for all the technical data of the Product (3D models, plans, documents, nomenclatures and configurations, ranges and instruction sheets)
• ERP: System for managing orders, stocks and planning production orders (process definition)
• MES: Production order management and monitoring system (process execution)
• MIS: Management and monitoring system for the maintenance of delivered products

And on the other, the physical systems of the plant:

• Operators: characterized by data such as status, position, occupation, assignment and qualification
• PLCs / Machines: characterized by data such as status, number of parts produced, cycle times
• The warehouse: characterized by data such as the status, level and geolocation of stocks

With all this data and the application capacities of an IoT platform, real use cases are now possible such as:

• The digital cockpit: real-time monitoring of the production line with the monitoring of production orders and all indicators such as TRS, progress and quality of parts produced
• Predictive maintenance: analysis of the behavior of PLCs with anticipation of maintenance actions to avoid (or control) the unforeseen shutdown of machines and therefore disruption of the line
• Energy monitoring: real-time monitoring of machine consumption to optimize or even reduce this consumption and alert in the event of abnormal operation.
• Guide and Training: transmit expert knowledge to less qualified operators via digital (or even virtual) instructions and support them in the conduct of their operations
• Team Management: setting up a daily meeting with monitoring of real-time indicators and the associated action plan to mobilize all teams
• Mobility: Have everything on your mobile phone to be able to analyze situations and quickly make the right decision
• Geo-location: know at any time the position of conveyors, tools, stocks and operators to control and optimize flows and better understand behavior in order to reduce their loads and efforts

Some applications are directly accessible with the standard PTC solutions and others have been developed by PERCALL to provide maximum business value and allow rapid deployment on the production site of manufacturers.

Today, we can speak of reality because large manufacturers have chosen these technologies and are in the process of deploying these use cases on their various industrial sites. If you would like to learn more and find out what they deployed and how they did, please do not hesitate to contact our experts.