The IOT Leverage

31 Oct 2017 CW Staff

Schwing Stetter India is the first organisation to have launched an in-house electronics and automation department in India. Schwing Stetter India (SSI) is the very first organisation to have launched an in-house electronics and automation department in India. So far, the company has supplied more than 40,000 units overall in different product ranges across the country. Now, one of the challenges that they are facing in the current industrial revolution is digitalising the supplied equipment for the customer to attain the industries 4.0 concept. The key motto behind this project is to get the performance detail in a dashboard, anytime and anywhere, to gauge the machine efficiency, utilisation and case study, the cycle time and also to avoid major breakdowns. The product is a combination of both, hardware and software. The technology will be adopted across all equipment (batching plant and concrete pumps). In the batching plant, a service tool was developed using '.net' to share the required data into the cloud integrated with Microsoft Azure (Azure was an initiation from the customer side). Whereas for concrete boom placer pumps, SSI has developed a device that can handle up to 10 analogue or digital IOs and also supports RS485 interface with dedicated and Modbus protocol. Apart from these two features, it also supports CAN to interface with the truck engine parameters in which the boom placers are mounted. Main advantages <ul> <li>Here are some advantages on having the IoT leverage for all the equipment:</li> <li>The utilisation of machine is monitored and by doing this, idle machines can be diverted to some other sites in need.</li> <li>Efficiency of the machine is gauged periodically. Machine behaviour can be monitored over time, allowing SSI to make a case study on the parts' failures, by which it can have some predictive maintenance to bring down any major breakdowns.</li> <li>Real requirement of manpower can be analysed in detail.</li> <li>Productivity and overall performance can be reviewed with real-time data with maximum accuracy.</li> <li>Consumption and raw material inventory management is done in an effective way.</li></ul> Future plans There are plans to improve the product in all aspects in the future. As far as the batching plant is concerned, the cycle time study will be done in more depth such as considering individual function. Capturing of alerts will be improved to support all product categories like boom pump and so on. The IoT device will also be introduced in stationary pumps and concrete truck mixers with GPS integration and engine parameter integration, by which the client can have a detailed study of machine behaviour and maintenance schedules. There is another revolution going on in industry. Big data is converted to smart data and the machine performance is monitored in a deep way. Every hour the machine runs, there is return on investment. The IoT device can give the data readily at reach, analyse it and take predictive steps to keep the machinery in running condition during the real demand. This system is totally customisable, which means Microsoft azure is not the limit. It can be made under particular company domain with the server provided by organisation or even integrated to the user ERP, etc. This is the need of the hour at present, and this product will catch attention in the coming days. (Communication by the management of the company)