Anyone who's walked a plant floor can tell you there's a lot going on at once. Operators are monitoring machines, repair technicians are servicing equipment, supervisors are assigning tasks, and these disparate teams need to coordinate their activity and enhance their productivity – it’s a lot to manage all at once.
But what if you could link all those processes together and integrate them? Mobile technology has made a huge contribution in increasing the efficiency of the plant by allowing employees to be mobile while getting their work done.
We’ll be at Rockwell Automation Nov. 13-14 in Houston to showcase solutions that link automation and control systems with mobility. From plant communications, to mobile operator solutions and materials management activities, all these functions can be connected to synchronize visualization and control across the plant floor and drive intelligent production.
Tools like Motorola's Staff Communications and Management solution enable workers to use a variety of devices to communicate clearly and reliably with one another, especially when using digital MOTOTRBO™ two-way radios and smart devices running MOTOTRBO Anywhere. Productivity-enhancing apps such as Mobile Workforce Management provide workers with an up-to-the-minute prioritized task list.
The 2013 Motorola Solutions Manufacturing Barometer survey uncovered that almost 60 percent of manufactures use portable two-way radios in their plants, making it a common method of communication.
Through integration with PLCs (programmable logic controllers), two-way radios can receive alarms and alerts, allowing workers to know what is happening, why it is happening, and where it is happening the moment unplanned downtime occurs. Industrial wireless solutions can now be integrated with these two-way radio systems to provide local application hosting, allowing for real-time collaboration.
Another important emerging capability is having a unified view of the plant floor at your fingertips. Entire, plant-wide human-machine interfaces (HMI) dashboards that are accessible to operators anywhere in a plant on a durable tablet, such as the ET1, give operators immediate access to critical information, alarms, alerts and automation control with mobile HMI.
Fixed line-side terminals can also be remotely connected to durable tables on the plant floor. This level of visibility lets operators know when something is wrong and coordinate work ticket escalation and resolution with repair technicians. With some PLCs, you can also interface with fixed RFID readers and enterprise-grade mobile devices through Ethernet/IP and other standards-based protocols, allowing operators to gain the benefits of direct interfaces for RFID and mobile computers without requiring additional computers or technology. That means better tracking and more intelligent production at a lower total cost of ownership.
We’ll be discussing these solutions in our presentation entitled “Innovations in RFID, Mobile HMI and Supporting Infrastructures” at Automation Fair on Wednesday and Thursday, from 10:00am – 11:00am in Room 332AD and will be showcasing them in Booth #1303 all day.
Entries » Blog » Bringing Integrated Solutions to the Plant Floor
Bringing Integrated Solutions to the Plant Floor
Anyone who's walked a plant floor can tell you there's a lot going on at once. Operators are monitoring machines, repair technicians are servicing equipment, supervisors are assigning tasks, and these disparate teams need to coordinate their activity and enhance their productivity – it’s a lot to manage all at once.
But what if you could link all those processes together and integrate them? Mobile technology has made a huge contribution in increasing the efficiency of the plant by allowing employees to be mobile while getting their work done.
We’ll be at Rockwell Automation Nov. 13-14 in Houston to showcase solutions that link automation and control systems with mobility. From plant communications, to mobile operator solutions and materials management activities, all these functions can be connected to synchronize visualization and control across the plant floor and drive intelligent production.
Tools like Motorola's Staff Communications and Management solution enable workers to use a variety of devices to communicate clearly and reliably with one another, especially when using digital MOTOTRBO™ two-way radios and smart devices running MOTOTRBO Anywhere. Productivity-enhancing apps such as Mobile Workforce Management provide workers with an up-to-the-minute prioritized task list.
The 2013 Motorola Solutions Manufacturing Barometer survey uncovered that almost 60 percent of manufactures use portable two-way radios in their plants, making it a common method of communication.
Through integration with PLCs (programmable logic controllers), two-way radios can receive alarms and alerts, allowing workers to know what is happening, why it is happening, and where it is happening the moment unplanned downtime occurs. Industrial wireless solutions can now be integrated with these two-way radio systems to provide local application hosting, allowing for real-time collaboration.
Another important emerging capability is having a unified view of the plant floor at your fingertips. Entire, plant-wide human-machine interfaces (HMI) dashboards that are accessible to operators anywhere in a plant on a durable tablet, such as the ET1, give operators immediate access to critical information, alarms, alerts and automation control with mobile HMI.
Fixed line-side terminals can also be remotely connected to durable tables on the plant floor. This level of visibility lets operators know when something is wrong and coordinate work ticket escalation and resolution with repair technicians. With some PLCs, you can also interface with fixed RFID readers and enterprise-grade mobile devices through Ethernet/IP and other standards-based protocols, allowing operators to gain the benefits of direct interfaces for RFID and mobile computers without requiring additional computers or technology. That means better tracking and more intelligent production at a lower total cost of ownership.
We’ll be discussing these solutions in our presentation entitled “Innovations in RFID, Mobile HMI and Supporting Infrastructures” at Automation Fair on Wednesday and Thursday, from 10:00am – 11:00am in Room 332AD and will be showcasing them in Booth #1303 all day.
You can also learn more about these solutions by visiting our site at
www.motorolasolutions.com/rockwellautomation.
See you in Houston!
Mike Wills is Vice President, North America Manufacturing Sales, Motorola Solutions.
Read another blog by Mike, “Growing Economies Inside and Outside Organizations with Efficient Manufacturing.”
For more information about Motorola Solutions’ Manufacturing innovations, please visit www.MotorolaSolutions.com/Manufacturing. Read the Future of Manufacturing Survey results here.