Addressing the bottlenecks in paint shop operations  Streamlining PTED paint shop procedures has been a significant bottleneck for the MGI plant team over the past few years. With legacy automation systems in operation for over 20 years, the team couldn’t use existing systems such as programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and Andon Systems to disclose or suggest information on productivity development prospects. They couldn’t study processes aside from standard key performance indicators (KPIs), such as overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) or downtime data. The systems in the paint shop did not provide reliable and accurate real-time performance data.
The main challenges include: 

• Visualize near real-time performance parameters to determine machine productivity.
• Identify the main factors contributing to bottlenecks that are dynamic and change over time.
• Find effective ways to consider all relevant constraints in a complex environment to carry out root cause analytics.

While they were able to pluck the low-hanging fruit using the existing methods and technologies, the team needed enhanced analytics to eliminate process bottlenecks.

Building the foundation:     
Siemens offered state-of-the-art wireless connectivity of the 14 Mobile hangars to the Central controller. This reduced communication delays, increased reliability and eliminated wear and tear, hence reduce maintenance efforts & giving complete peace of mind to the MGI team. Adding to this was flexibility of having all the SIEMENS devices on PROFINET backbone and easy configuration via TIA portal.
Leveraging MindSphere to connect the data and identify bottlenecks  
Using the out-of-the-box (OOTB) MindSphere connectivity solution enabled MGI’s team to connect isolated assets and transfer the data to MindSphere using mobile communications (GSM) network. All timeseries data from each step of production process were uploaded into MindSphere to provide the basis for further data analysis.   
MGI uses the MindSphere application, Visual Flow Creator, to build  workflow to create rules, define KPIs and perform advanced analytics. It enables them to convert the raw timeseries data into meaningful information.      Using another MindSphere application, easyDASH, enables them to create dashboards easily. They can monitor and visualize shop floor assets for optimization and performance management.  MGI use the dashboard’s color feature to indicate whether important parameters such as JPH, cycle time, waiting and travel time stay within their target operating efficiencies. This provides them with a more cohesive vision of the current state of process and allows us to make more effective decisions.  
Visualization and customized analytics powered by MindSphere capture the digital process data for micro steps and even storing it on the cloud. This enables MGI to visualize and carry out strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis of the process. This helps the MGI team identify the root causes of the production losses and actions to improve the net output.

Integrating MindSphere and Plant Simulation to optimize production throughout 
Once they collect real production data from the shop floor, they transfer the timeseries data from MindSphere to Plant Simulation, which enables them to use a digital twin model to understand the root cause of a problem by replaying the production using the actual production data. 
Once they identify the problem, they make the required changes and verify the impact of the changes using the simulation with the actual production data, which more accurately shows any unintended effects or new constraints caused by these changes. After resolving these issues in virtual digital twin model, MGI now have confidence to implement the changes to the production system. 
Using the industrial internet of things (IIoT) paired with plant simulation forms the closed-loop comprehensive digital twin, which enables MGI to use real production data to continuously optimize throughout.