Exercise Your Right To Better Information
Conceived and developed by manufacturing experts, our Machine Data Collection software allows companies to connect to any of their industrial resources to provide automated intelligence related to asset availability, performance, and quality as well as machine and process health data. The FREEDOM® Smart Manufacturing Platform distributes real-time analytics throughout the organization providing actionable information that allows you to monitor uptime, downtime, and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). With visibility to this type of data in your operation, you can drive down costs and increase productivity with your existing assets.
By MANUFACTURERS,
FOR MANUFACTURERS
Our in depth knowledge of manufacturing assets, processes, and operations, provides unique insight into the best solution for transforming raw data into actionable information.
Looking to increase valuable production time through machine data collection?
Machine monitoring software like FREEDOM allows you to uncover more capacity by viewing all-time categories spent with individual machines, groups of machines, or all assets, over an indicated time. To discover what is holding up your production, drill down into the details of each event to see how often work stoppages are happening or where the most delays occur to help your efforts in determining root cause of potential issues. Compare machines by cells, value streams, shifts, and more to see any potential process problems. Analyze production time and resolve unnecessary downtime to make sure your assets are being utilized to their fullest potential.
Looking for visibility to top alerts and events that cause disruption with machine monitoring software?
With FREEDOM, you can quickly visualize the count and duration of many alarms or maintenance issues which pinpoints your top problematic areas quickly. FREEDOM lets you stay proactive, keep up with machine health, and avoid unnecessary downtime by easily integrating machine information with your current enterprise maintenance systems. View real-time and historical details of machine alarms and receive condition-based email or text messages related to the items that you need to know about when they occur.
Detailed Reports from CNC Monitoring Software
Detailed reports can identify whether a machine tends to be down more often than it’s in-cycle. If a machine constantly trends this way, it is not contributing to the efficiency of your operation and may be doing more harm than good. Offline machines and repairs cost time, money, and ultimately disrupt production flow. Inefficient machines and frequent production delays can quickly add up to tens of thousands of dollars lost. Historical information can also identify potential causes of unwanted trends, and how outside factors might influence production. For example, discovering that bringing in four new machines at once created a temporary 25% decrease in productivity would inform a need to stagger the purchase of new machines in the future.
FREEDOM streamlines financial reporting from the shop floor to the top floor. Our e$CORE® Metrics translate production costs directly into a monetized view of asset performance. If you are wondering where you are losing revenue, drill down into specific losses with detailed FREEDOM reports. Analyze asset investments for upcoming projects, receive information for Return on Asset analysis (ROA), and/or quantify a major repair project.
Set up Custom Views
You can set up views that provide specific information that is important to managers, shop floor workers, your financing department, and more. Not everyone needs the same information, so custom views across different teams give everyone the particular metrics they need. Machine monitoring technology solutions enable managers to identify and address supply chain issues in real-time, reducing downtime and production lags, and increasing overall profitability. Machine monitoring software systems also facilitate fast and efficient production, enabling manufacturers to quickly produce a more comprehensive array of quality products that address unique customer needs.
Design your real-time machine monitoring dashboards to include what’s important to your operation like OEE, it’s components, and part counting. Create personal real-time dashboards for use at your desktop or deploy department-specific visuals that can be shared on the shop floor on a large display. Real-time dashboards can be created for customizable views and create slideshows to increase the information that you share with your teams.
There are many benefits to recognize which can help your operation improve by using this machine data collection technology. Most companies that have already started with us have seen gains of 20% and more in production improvements and a system ROI in as little as three months. For those companies who have not started yet, now is the time. Companies can choose to start off monitoring just a few assets and then easily scale to additional targets when they are ready. This provides a company with the ability to get started and quickly gain the benefits as they become more engaged with the product and its capabilities.
HOW DOES MACHINE MONITORING SOFTWARE CONNECT TO YOUR DEVICES?
FREEDOM connects to any industrial asset—regardless of brand, age, or process. Most modern machine controls come from the factory ready for network communications. In these situations, connectivity can be completed in a very short timeframe with a software interface and connection to the company network. In situations where customers are looking to deploy smart manufacturing techniques on a legacy machine, the FREEDOM team can provide a small industrial hardware appliance that will assist with communicating the real-time asset information to the FREEDOM server.
Each selected asset uses one of three FREEDOM interfaces
Defining the make and model of each asset’s control will allow our team to determine which of these three interfaces is required for connectivity.
FREEDOM Software Adapter –
This interface is for machines with embedded PC-based control (e.g., Siemens 840D, Fanuc 100-series). Our software interface provides a rich data set through the installation and configuration of software on the machine control. This software communicates real-time information to the FREEDOM server
FREEDOM Hosting Device –
This interface is for those machines with an industrial controller that does not support open architecture (e.g. Fanuc 10-series, Heidenhain). Machine data is translated from its native state to a format that can be consumed by programs such as FREEDOM
FREEDOM Discrete I/O Interface
(e.g. Acramatic 950, G&L-6000, GE-2000). For legacy machines, a hardware interface can be deployed that will allow you to connect to electrical outputs on the target asset which are translated and sent to the FREEDOM server to display pertinent real-time data related to your legacy machining processes
These hardwired adapters make it possible to include legacy machines as part of the machine monitoring system in your facility. This results in standard data sets that are presented in a consistent format which can be integrated with all other machine data to provide a comprehensive view of your machine health and production information. The FREEDOM Hardware Adapter has MTConnect on-board and connects directly to the FREEDOM Server.
FREEDOM Sensor Adapter –
This interface supports additional machine sensors that are not integrated into the machine’s control. This sensor data can be merged with the information being provided from the machine control and is then displayed in FREEDOM creating a central point for all of your machine data
The adapters are expandable and can connect to a variety of sensor based data such as:
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- Digital (proximity, pressure, power, etc.)
- Analog (temperature, current, concentration, etc.)
- Vibration (velocity RMS, bearing SPM)
- Power (3-phase Watts)
As a means of driving true enterprise transparency, FREEDOM can also be interfaced to existing ERP, MES, and CMMS systems. This facilitates improved operational intelligence based on real-time data exchange. FREEDOM Operator and Andon stations can be installed at each industrial asset, providing access for the specific classification of delays, repairs, or processes, and to add comments for further clarification.
PREPARING YOUR PEOPLE FOR MACHINE DATA COLLECTION
Organization-wide Commitment
The Machine monitoring software can only be successful if there is buy-in from your entire organization. Education on the goals, benefits, and methods behind a successful machine data collection software are critical.
The Role of Shop Floor Personel
Specific attention should be given to shop floor personnel. Shop floor personnel play a key role in classifying downtime into meaningful categories for analysis, and their complete buy-in is vital if the end-user is to realize the maximum improvement. This is a great opportunity to explain to them why machine monitoring results in improved operations. Machine data collection not only benefits the bottom line but can help employees. Real-time dashboards on the shop floor can display data that confirms operations are running smoothly or point out problem areas such as delays and downtime that need their attention.
Everyone Plays a Part
Everyone in your company contributes to the overall efficiency of your operations. Machine monitoring software like FREEDOM helps everyone see how.