The benefits of IIoT systems like MindSphere for the glass industry
The cloud is the medium of choice for saving their generated data, many customers say
The benefits of IIoT systems like MindSphere for the glass industry
For some, it’s a matter of designing processes more efficiently, or
boosting productivity. Others believe that the greatest benefit of IIoT systems
like MindSphere is that they increase product quality, raise service and
maintenance to a new level, and simplify them tremendously. And then there are
those who value the IIoT because it improves collaboration across locations or
even companies and allows them to define and better track KPIs – or even to create
new, digitally based business models. Last but not least, many glass
manufacturers are optimizing their production to reduce resource consumption.
The cloud is the medium of choice for saving their generated data, say
many customers, above all because it also adequately addresses important topics
like security, data privacy, and compliance. Cloud services undoubtedly offer
other benefits as well.
MindSphere in particular offers a broad range of protocol options for device
and enterprise applications, applications for the glass industry, comprehensive
analyses, and an innovative development environment that uses the open PaaS
(open platform as a service) functions from Siemens and provides access to
cloud services from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Alibaba. MindSphere also makes it possible to connect products, plants, and
machines located around the world to a central cloud location, which ensures
high transparency in plant operations. The successful mastery of digitalization
using an IoT platform requires companies to establish iterative connections to
various PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) tools. This improves data
collection, processing, analysis, and utilization.
What matters is shared, cost-effective data storage that allows companies to
use less of their own resources for hardware and software maintenance, among
other benefits.
Many applications for the glass industry are already available across
the entire glass manufacturing process – both from Siemens, from major suppliers
in the glass industry, or from Siemens’ partners.
For example, Control Performance Analytics can be used to optimally
adjust control circuits. In the process industries, some 50 percent of all
control circuits still aren’t operating at the optimal settings. For example,
using this application, data from the process can be automatically analyzed
using algorithms and provide users with instructions on how to set the control
circuit parameters in order to improve process stability.
Process Event Analytics (PEA), on the other hand, provides efficient
optimization of the alarm system. The application continuously monitors and
improves alarm systems in the process industries. By combining the IEC62682 and
EEMUA191 standards with innovative analytics, this app can efficiently identify
improvement measures. PEA requires no additional manuals or training and relies
on a simple pay-per-use model.
Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) makes it possible to visualize
machine and plant effectiveness. This means that the OEE app can be used to
display and visualize overall equipment effectiveness as a product of
availability x performance x quality.
The cold end of the glass manufacturing process is where the Simatic
MindSphere apps – the cloud-based solutions for industrial automation
technology – come into play. For example, companies that want to track and
optimize their productivity, energy consumption, and machine and location
service worldwide can opt for Simatic Performance Insight. This app helps
identify optimization potential by monitoring and analyzing machine KPIs.
Thanks to the Notifier app, faults and other important events in a
machine or plant are sent to connected mobile devices on the basis of rules.
Operators or service technicians are notified ad hoc, regardless of location,
and can immediately respond to the event.
Simatic Machine Monitor
can be used to manage machine service planning by tracking maintenance
intervals.
Finally, Fleet Manager ensures the transparency of assets configured in
MindSphere. It displays specific machine parameters like limit violations and
also defines specific actions based on these parameters.
Tobias Wachtmann, Head of Vertical Glass & Solar at Siemens
“Each customer has their eye on a different set of goals, which is why
we have to carefully listen to them and advise them on which of the
improvements that digitalization brings actually have priority and are
planned.”
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