F098: IIOT, Data, & The Smart Factory Ecosystem: Real-Time Data for Fabricators

Manufacturers are under pressure to reduce costs, improve efficiency and be more flexible in production. Smart Manufacturing and IIoT provide a path to address these pressures, and smart sensors, network protocols, interface blocks and edge gateways/interface devices provide simple and cost-effective ways to gather device data and communicate it to where it’s needed: control-, process-, and/or enterprise-level, and the cloud.

Smart sensors now have enhanced capability to provide information to more closely monitor and optimize manufacturing processes: process, event and service/device data. Sensor-level networks such as IO-Link greatly simplify start up, allowing sensors to be connected to I/O blocks using standard cabling, reducing wiring time and trouble-shooting. These I/O blocks consolidate the smart sensor data and are easily connected to higher level Ethernet or Fieldbus protocols, and then transmit the information where it’s needed: control systems or cloud devices using standard masters and edge gateways.

Manufacturers must accelerate worker proficiency while maintaining quality, throughput, and safety in increasingly complex operations. This presentation explores how Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technology can transform workforce development with a “Digital Coach” approach that delivers real-time, actionable guidance at the point of work.

By connecting sensors, machines, and analytic platforms, digital systems collect operational data, analyzes it, and convert it into live feedback that supports performance improvement and error reduction. Integrated IIoT solutions can capture machine status, process quality metrics, operator actions, WPS and PQR data, to drive informed decisions instantly, rather than relying on delayed manual reporting and retrospective reviews. More importantly, it can tell you exactly what, where and how to improve your operations by uncovering bottlenecks, errors and inferior material handlings.

Attendees will learn how connected equipment and shop-floor applications enable continuous visibility into productivity and quality, automate insights, and reinforce best practices across skill levels.