Accelerating Robotic Success Through Holistic Factory Control

Hypercompetitive market pressures are threatening manufacturing facility success from all sides. Downstream social trends constantly shape consumer sentiment of manufactured goods, increasing the total number of distinct part numbers manufactured in the same facility. Transportation mergers are consolidating freight suppliers, threatening the negotiating power of facilities. Upstream direct material suppliers are seeking cost savings through inferior quality raw materials, threatening facilities’ scrap metrics. Shareholders are pursuing ever robust proforma financial statements regardless of the cost of capital or macro-economic volatility, threatening the ability for facilities to innovate freely. These pressures can create challenges on the plant floor and raise automation project expectations. Holistic factory automation can alleviate the challenges created from these pressures by accelerating both the utility of robotics and the scalability of robotics.

In this article, holistic factory control automation will be introduced. Best practices will be outlined that enhance robot utility and scalability. In each section, the focus will be on maximizing system performance through simplicity of design, while ensuring that the deployment of future technology can be quickly integrated non-intrusively.

The success of new technology is not only measured by omni-use applications, which act as a foundation for subsequent innovations, but the adoption rate of the technology across user demographics. Robots, by either measure, represent a successful new technology. Increasing the overall success of a specific robot is a function of maximizing the initial utility of the robot and decreasing incremental operating costs. However, success can still fail to meet stakeholder expectations. This commonly occurs when the designing, commissioning, and scaling automation steps are not data-centric, and the overall production strategy is not a unifying force on the factory floor. As a result, each addition of automation onto the factory floor creates a series of isolated islands of robots versus a unified commonwealth of automation. Teams can accelerate the success of newer robotics technology by partnering with organizations that design with open industrial protocols, commission through 3D simulation, and scale with automation playback.

Design With the Goal in Mind, Accelerating Adoption Through Simplicity

Whether an original equipment manufacturer, system integrator, or end user, the design phase is the first step to maximizing robotic utility and accelerating future automation adoption. When designing automation to minimize complexity and preserve the opportunity to adopt yet-to-be-released technology quickly, the goal is to leverage communication protocols that exhibit the network effect. Where the network effect is defined as a behavior that becomes more valuable when more user groups adopt it. User groups can consist of teams within the same factory, within the same organization, or within the same industry.

The common challenges of robotic adoption are directly correlated to the scale of communication network complexity within a single factory. This complexity can be inventoried by counting the multiple fieldbuses, multiple controllers, or multiple software packages. Holistic factory control achieved through all-in-one automation platforms use globally open industrial protocols to remove the multitude of complexity with the goal of achieving a single connection.

Globally open industrial protocols continue to see adoption across factory floors. The first driver fueling this adoption is that the protocols are inclusive, allowing for new technology to be implemented without a complete machine redesign. The second driver being that many protocols can inherently boost robotic performance. For example, many machine automation controllers have OPC UA® built-in, allowing factories to remove middleware and reduce the number of licenses in the facility. EtherCAT® achieves efficient communication that drives accuracy and repeatability through synchronous and time stamp modes.

With a single connection at the heart of factory architecture, commissioning new robotics allows the team to remove hidden costs before factories fully invest in deployment. While the validation of system performance through commissioning is usually completed once the robot is on the shop floor with fully assembled equipment, commissioning should be completed in parallel to physical construction. Integral 3D simulation for new automation is becoming the industry standard. In these integrated program development environments, ladder logic written using IEC61131-3 standards is then verified through modeling in the same software. Allowing programmers to step through the program while simultaneously allowing operators to verify condition monitoring with HMI screens to validate key process metrics. This off-the-shelf feature can give factories confidence to accept a new robot quicker.

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After robots are commissioned, these units are the very beginning of their service life. Naturally, being able to improve performance by scaling subsequent capital projects is imperative to continuing to meet expectations of factory stakeholders. Where scaling can be defined as either adding robotics to an existing process or the re-deployment of the same robot to undertake a second process. All-encompassing automation playback is becoming the industry standard. Automation playback is defined as the aggregation then visualization of all data on the factory floor surrounding a past event. Where all playback is time synced and event triggered. Through the visualization of video, ladder logic, program structure, and variable data simultaneously, the off-the-shelf feature can help locate where operational improvements are lingering. Achieved through a single factory floor connection, this feature gives operational teams an objective and time-synchronized view of the process from which to begin troubleshooting.

Realize Real Returns, Maximize Utility and Minimize Complexity Costs

By using globally open industrial protocols to minimize complexity, 3D simulation to verify performance with more predictability, and holistic data aggregation to scale more confidently, it is critical to ensure that returns on investment are tangible and realized on the factory floor. The return on investment is a function of utility and cost. Whereby maximizing utility and minimizing cost, factories can achieve returns beyond initial forecasts on capital projects. Removing complexity throughout the entire deployment process, operational teams can increase utility and decrease the incremental cost of automation.

Using globally open industrial protocols, such as IO Link, provides data granularity to make more confident process predictions, shifting maintenance from reactive to proactive. OPC UA® built into standard control units removes middleware licenses and the need to broker data using a computer on the factory floor, reducing costs and removing the risk of creating islands of automations or silos of data. EtherNET/IP™ and CIP Safety™ communication in the same CAT5 cable creates a single control connection, minimizing wiring complexity. With single controllers able to accommodate all protocols as standard, aggregation of data becomes all encompassing. This single centralized aggregation of data gives factories complete traceability.

Find A Partner and Champion Holistic Factory Control

The pressures of hypercompetitive markets won’t be alleviated naturally. Consumer demands will continue to evolve, suppliers will continue to deploy new raw material sourcing actions, and shareholders will continue to seek above-market returns. To bridge the gap between fragmented factory control and holistic factory control, the automation industry hosts partners with technological insight into the designing, commissioning, and scaling of robotics. When selecting a partner’s technology three questions should be referenced to guide decision making. The first being, how can this robot integrate into my automation? This can help frame how best to select a globally open industrial protocol. The second being, how can this robot leverage technology yet to be released? If a partner is already preventing compliance with current technology, factories are limiting the amount of future technology that can be adopted. The third being, how can this robot provide the data to unite the factory floor not divide it? As collaborating with a partner should be catalyst for a data-first mindset not an inhibitor.

Holistic factory control accelerates the adoption of robotics while simultaneously increasing the impact robots can make on operating statements. With accessibility to a multitude of globally open industrial protocols and off-the-shelf standard features such as 3D automation simulation and automation playback, the technology exists to begin unifying automation on the factory floor.