Combining dashboards for operators and engineers allows for even faster analysis of production line issues. For now, artificial intelligence won’t take their place, Angelo Hulshout believes.
Dashboards have been on the radar of the manufacturing industry for a while. They show up more and more, sometimes connected to the cloud, sometimes integrated with local solutions like a MES or Scada. In most cases, they’re used to monitor energy consumption, production rates or operational equipment effectiveness (OEE). Having such dashboards allows operators and management to continuously keep an eye on important production parameters. What they see can lead to action, (production) process improvement or changes in the setup of production lines.
The data needed for this typically comes from digital equipment, like sensors and controllers (PLCs), or from human input, eg from metal workers indicating on a screen or through a barcode scan when they start and stop a certain job. We can also add analog signal sensors with a digital output to an existing system, for example to measure current on an analog machine to see if it’s running or idle. This opens up dashboard functionality for older, non-digital equipment.
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