The Solution Family of Products provides a flexible integration architecture that ensures that all machines on your shop floor can participate in your analysis, management and production improvement process. Technologies like MTConnect®, OPC and Power Monitoring are integrated in minutes.  Both CNC and non cutting machines such as presses, benders or any other process equipment can be easily integrated into your view of your production process.  The diagram below shows an example of several CNCs integrated on a shop floor.  Each of these types of integration is described below:

MTConnect® Integration

Existing and future MTConnect® Agents v1.X directly integrate into The Solution Family of Products.

Power Monitoring

Legacy Machines without intelligent controllers can easily provide production and process information through the use of the Quick Start Platform and The Solution Family’s innovative Power Monitoring. Power integration allows the “clipping on” of a single Power Sensor onto the incoming power lines to be monitored allowing the identification of Parts and Individual Operations during the production process.

OPC Integration

OPC integration is easily achieved through identification of OPC tag points that represent major state changes on the machine tool.

MTConnect® Protocol Everywhere

All data from all of these machines then moves from either MTConnect® Agents or the Quick Start Platform via the MTConnect® protocol to The Solution Family of Products or other third party tools as seen in the diagram below. The Quick Start Platform contains a fully compliant MTConnect® Agent. Once any of these machine technologies are integrated through the simple wizards, the full capabilities of Solution Builder® and Solution Manager allow for the full analysis of any sensor data, integration in the shop floor management process and most importantly, participation in the production process improvements on your floor.

 

The Solution Family of Products provides simple integration wizards that allow you to include your entire shop floor in the management and analysis necessary to first understand and then improve your production process. The following type of machines can be integrated into the Solution Family:

Machine Type	Integration Path
CNC Machine with Legacy Closed Controllers	Leverage The Solution Family’s innovative Power Monitoring capability. Apply Power Sensors or other metrologies with the Quick Start Platform and derive production information from the incoming power.  All additional sensors are available for real time analysis and historic trending.
CNC Machines with MTConnect® Agents	MTConnect® - Connect to MTConnect® Agents V 1.X by providing their network address.
CNC Machines with MTConnect® Agents	MTConnect® + Power Monitoring - Connect to MTConnect® Agents V 1.X by providing their network address and add additional sensors through a Quick Start Platform.  This combination has proven to be powerful in creating combinatorial information that neither Power Monitoring or MTConnect® has alone.
CNC Machines with OPC Interfaces	Connect Directly to the OPC Tags for Program Start and Stop, Program Name, Program Line Number through an OPC Server from a Quick Start Platform.
Non CNC Machines with OPC Interfaces	Connect Directly to the OPC Tags representing the Start and Stop of Processes and any additional process information.

 

With this variety of interfaces, The Solution Manager provides a simple Wizard for adding machines into the Production Monitoring process.  Simply select the Add Machine Wizard from the Tool Bar and you are presented with the following dialog:

Simply select the type of machine your are integrating, assign a machine name and select the Quick Start Platform that will communicate with the machine and you are finished.

The Solution Family Team has worked hard to ensure that the "No Machine left behind" goal is a reality!