Group evaluates CNC/ERP integration

OMAC's HMI Working Group exists to promote best practices and technology applications that provide connectivity to the enterprise through open architecture.

OMAC's Human Machine Interface (HMI) Working Group exists to promote best practices and technology applications that provide connectivity to the enterprise through open architecture.

Recently, OMAC has been working on advancing OPC as a CNC integration technology as a best practice.

OPC is an industry standard for open connectivity in industrial automation and has been supported by nearly all of the major providers of industrial automation.

The OMAC HMI Working Group organised a joint project between OMAC HMI members Boeing, Okuma, and NIST to evaluate the integration of computer numerical control (CNC) to enterprise resource planning (ERP) and determine if part accountability could be achieved with minimal integration efforts using OPC/OMAC technologies.

Realising the challenges associated with integrating factory floor information into ERP subsystems are significant due to the traditional factory floor setup model, the project team established only one goal.

That goal was to examine the effectiveness of an Okuma PC based controller - THINC in collecting cycle times, setup and job times, part quantities and other vital information on machine and job performance to minimise data entry requirements for machine operators and to provide real-time parts cost accounting to an ERP accounting subsystem.

The joint Boeing/Okuma/NIST work integrated the production of Boeing 737 Leading Edge (LE) Panels on an Okuma open-architecture CNC with the enterprise to provide real-time cost data.

"Overall, we successfully achieved most of our goal of a "touch" to "nontouch" operation", said OMAC Chairman Sid Venkatesh of Boeing.

"We were able to replace the tedious data entry process required of the machine operators with a more automated approach".

"As far as realising an efficiency ROI for CNC - ERP is concerned, we were able to validate that CNC-ERP connectivity was possible, simple and cost-effective once the details of interaction between the shop floor and the scrap reorder SCM system were established".

This project demonstrated the ease with which the machine tool end user, Boeing in this case, can use a truly open control platform to realise their ideas and vision.

Okuma exposed the necessary data from the Okuma THINC control standard application programming interface (API) in an OPC wrapper.

Boeing and NIST were able to complete the project with no additional assistance from Okuma.

This autonomy in implementation of creative applications is the distinct advantage of the open control platform - controls adapting to the requirements of the end user.

The project team is planning to continue refining the application to demonstrate the efficiencies associated with lean manufacturing targeting improvements in inventory control that would equate to cost savings.

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