Press Release - 28 March 2017
Hannover Fair 2017, 24-28 April, Hall 7, Stand D28
With its “Connected World”, the MES of the company GUARDUS Solutions AG in Ulm masters the complex relationship network between employee, machine, material and tool in the modern production concepts. The target is the complete transparency during the traceability of any trace units in automated, decentralised manufacturing environments – from individual components via assemblies, batches, boxes and pallets up to delivery slips and digitalised product information directly at the product’s place. The quintessence of the new pack of functions is to merge the digital information about a product from all the participants in the value-added chain. It resembles a central backbone which allows you to centrally collect and store extensive information packages and product life cycles from several plants, suppliers and countries for a long period of time. Moreover, implementation concepts for the control of the entire recordings in a central MES instance, while important information is still kept in a decentralised way at the product’s place, are also available.
Take me with you on the trip, captain ...
In the automated production concepts of the Industry 4.0 idea, all the players communicate in a flexible network structure – not only within a company, but also between the plants and suppliers. Components and products are provided with detailed information about themselves and their manufacturing processes so that (ad hoc) modifications in the manufacturing process as well as the delivery to the supply chain may be performed efficiently. The basis for this transfer of information is the so-called traceability. It serves for the identification of details as well as the continuous data collection for each manufactured part. A record of the product cycle comes thus into being whose contents are used for the automated control and documentation of the production process, among others – be it for plausibility inspections and blockings in the production lines, assembly or repair work.
From the perspective of storage media, the Connected World of GUARDUS MES supports the individual product identification. Depending on the volume of information and the production environment, the user can include various identification techniques such as RFID, QR code, Data Matrix etc. Thus, any volume of information, from the product ID and production and process parameters that are relevant for the assembly via version number, item number and the exact product designation up to information for its clean-up, can be attached to the product in an efficient, space saving and sustainable way. This information can be comfortably read by means of smartphones, tablets and other mobile end devices, depending on the used identification technique. In this way, the GUARDUS users are provided with all the important information about the product in a simple and quick way. At the same time, due to service access to the MES instance, the entire record of the product is available across locations and can be easily used, for example, during a customer audit, supplier meeting or a complaint. Moreover, it is also possible to display deepening information from the central database of GUARDUS MES with a few clicks. Process data relevant for the manufacturing and machining also belong to the stored trace information. These data can be enhanced with the used machine programs for the product machining.
Part tourism in the Industry 4.0
If a GUARDUS user opts for the cross-location product designation, then the following question arises: How does the trace information come to the next location? GUARDUS MES offers various options in this respect. The MES takes the role of a central backbone for all the locations or it is implemented at each location in a decentralised way. In the latter case, each participant in the production bond can have access to his/her own “majestic” data and receives relevant information of the forerunner plant via the selected storage medium. Due to the implementation of a superordinate recording instance and the connection of decentralised MES installations, the Connected World “knows” everything about a labelled product. “Industry 4.0 has already reached our customers in the first lighthouse projects for quite some time. We confront with the challenge of efficient implementation concepts and provide GUARDUS users with the most modern infrastructure solutions in centralised, decentralised or hybrid scenarios”, says Andreas Kirsch, member of the Executive Board of GUARDUS Solutions AG.
