Thinking about shopfloor interoperability—and making it happen: the significance of "plug-and-produce" integration for machine shops and manufacturing plants becomes clear from the perspective of an ERP software developer

Modern Machine Shop, Nov, 2007 by Mark Albert

"Plug and play" is the term used in the consumer electronics industry to assure customers that their new DVD players, video games, photo printers and so on, will work without a lot of setup or installation hassles as soon as they are hooked up. The Sony will work with the Hitachi. The HP will work with the Dell. Manufacturing plants and machine shops would like to have the same ease and assurance when attempting to integrate machine tool CNCs, measurement systems, tool pre-setters, data collection devices and other digital systems. For them, "plug and produce" would be the industrial version of the plug-and-play concept. As it stands today, shops and plants usually have difficulty with connecting different manufacturing systems in a way that allows manufacturing data to be shared, processed and used to improve productivity.

Several initiatives are afoot to relieve this situation. They promise to bring a new era of "interoperability" to the metalworking industry. The goal is to better enable digital devices and systems to "talk to each other" automatically on the shop floor and communicate with decision makers in the front office. "Interoperability" means that the systems can be connected effectively even though different developers and suppliers are involved.

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One of these initiatives is the Partners in THINC program sponsored by Okuma America Corp. This program is designed to take advantage of the open architecture of the company's THINC-OSP control for CNC machines. "Open architecture" means that the structure of this control's hardware and software allows other systems to be interfaced to it. For example, the control uses USB ports like those on laptop computers, digital cameras, printers and so on to make a physical connection between the CNC and external devices. Likewise, the CNC's software includes an applications programming interface (API) that makes its databases and processing functions accessible to software applications running in the external devices. Thus, signals indicating that a machine has completed its cycle, let's say, can be passed to any compliant device that needs an accurate, on-time count of finished parts.

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The most prominent development in this initiative is the Partners in THINC facility in Charlotte, North Carolina. Essentially, it's a large showroom where the company can demonstrate how various systems from other developers of manufacturing technology can link to the THINC control and to one another. These developers are the "partners" in the program. To participate, these partners must be committed to the collaborative spirit behind this initiative. Partners must provide equipment as well as help staff the facility with their personnel. The facility is meant to function as a production center that machines real customer parts to show how the integrated systems improve and streamline operations.

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A Bridge

One of the partners is the JobBoss unit of Exact Software (Minneapolis, Minnesota). JobBoss is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) application--that is, software designed to help managers monitor, control and optimize activities on the factory floor. This software includes modules for quoting and estimating, preparing shop routers and bills of material, scheduling, costing and other business management/ accounting functions.

It is useful to look at shopfloor integration in general and Okuma's THINC approach in particular from the perspective of an ERP developer. ERP is, literally and figuratively, a focal point that clarities why interoperability and integration are critical objectives for manufacturing enterprises. "ERP plays a unique role in a manufacturing company," explains Dan Deanovic, director of product development for Exact JobBoss. "It's the bridge between the factory floor and the front office. Integrating the machine tool CNC with other shopfloor manufacturing devices helps all of these systems run more efficiently, whereas integrating the CNC with an ERP system ultimately helps the entire enterprise run more efficiently."

That's because, he says, ERP not only gathers and shares shopfloor data but also organizes that data into information that help managers make better decisions. "It's logical for the machine tool CNC to act as a hub for the other manufacturing applications to which it is integrated," Mr. Deanovic says. "It's also logical for the ERP system to carry this integration to the enterprise-wide level."

Start With Automated Data Collection

Like all ERP systems, JobBoss needs information from the shop floor. This information must be entered into databases that the software can read. Data entry can be manual or automated to varying degrees. With no automation, operators can simply turn in reporting slips at the end of the shift. Operators with handheld keypads or bar code scanners connected to a shop network can make this reporting a pushbutton affair. Some operator intervention is required, but this method is quicker, timelier and less prone to error. The next step is full automation, which requires integration with the CNC. This is a logical next step because most of the information entered by the operator is based on what is displayed on the machine tool CNC.