Steps towards Manufacturing Digitisation in an Atmosphere for SMES

This paper describes an EU-funded project, organized by a national Digital Innovation Hub (DIH) aimed at integrating the digitization of manufacturing operations in a growing SME. The improvements made by an Irish Precision Engineering SME towards incorporation of operator reporting are discussed, from manual to electronic format. The benefits of small changes are represented to the company via cost-effective methods. The technologies employed included components from the BEinCPPS architecture for MTConnect, IoT apps and open source applications.This enabled the acquisition of production data and the energy monitoring of machines from the factory floor to a central repository where data analysis tools developed key performance indicators (KPI's) for shop floor visualization and mobile dashboards. The experiment demonstrated how the use of commercial off-shelf technology, combined with the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) program of the plant, minimized routine production management activities, enhanced equipment and resources management while reducing the pressure on machine operators reporting.