Equipment monitoring software for maintenance
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The Dilemma of Do-It-Yourself Equipment Monitoring Software

Downtime – and the response time to it – continues to plague manufacturers across the United States. A 2022 Siemens report revealed that a typical large plant “still loses 25 hours a month to unplanned downtime.” They estimate the cost of an hour of downtime to be $500,000 for oil and gas companies, which makes downtime quickly cost millions.

As a result, teams are responding by gathering internal technical requirements, evaluating off-the-shelf machine monitoring solutions and attempting trial implementations. Top machine monitoring solutions will capture data from new and aged CNC equipment and deliver trends and reports using configurable dashboards via modern communication tools, like text and Microsoft Teams, to help you pinpoint production bottlenecks and machine condition degradation for improved Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), quality control and profitability.

CNC machine monitoring for downtime monitoring

But there are hundreds of available equipment monitoring software solutions today, ranging from Predator Software to Scytec DataXchange and beyond, and the equipment monitoring market itself is projected to reach 220.92 million USD by 2031. This makes the vendor decision-making process all the more onerous and lengthier, particularly for time and labor-constrained companies. Some manufacturers are instead taking on a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) approach by assembling internal and/or outsourced developers, collaborating with various departments and rolling out a custom solution. There’s an attraction to this path, but is it truly the right way toward achieving more uptime, better operator performance and greater profits?

If you’re considering or already headed in this direction, you very well may consider the positive and negative aspects of DIY equipment monitoring development to fully validate your decision. As a manufacturing integrator experienced in helping manufacturers search, select and implement the ideal machine monitoring software solution for your business, the experts at Shop Floor Automations have compiled a comprehensive list to aid your research below. We welcome your comments on other advantages and disadvantages that factor into your own machine monitoring evaluation.

The Pros of DIY Equipment Monitoring Software Development

  • Potentially less upfront cost. When your teams develop equipment monitoring software in-house, you’re not likely to incur the recurring software subscription or license fees demanded by software vendors. Software subscription revenues are anticipated to grow by a CAGR of 16.6% reports EY, as enterprise technology companies continue to shift away from a perpetual software license model. You also have the benefit of leveraging existing programmable logic controllers (PLCs) without upfront costs for hardware and training to program it.
  • Built your way. Machine monitoring software designed for your business can be customized to accommodate your specific business processes, equipment types, locations, unique terminology and standards, integrations and more. You’re not forced to adapt to the user interface, limitations and future development of a commercial application geared for a mass of users.
  • Vendor neutral. A DIY equipment monitoring project allows you to be in control, deciding who is involved and how the system and data is maintained, supported, secured and located. Conversely, a machine monitoring software provider will often dictate the supporting partners and underlying ecosystem available with the solution – which can require data hosted by their third-party provider.
  • Fringe benefits of familiarity. When you’re able to dedicate your resources to your own project, you can command your own timetable, training program and the coordination of subject matter experts. There’s less of an educational barrier, too, as teams should be familiar with the corporate nomenclature, key personnel and strategic priorities. The purchase of a commercial application like equipment monitoring software, however, means you are beholden to the skills, bandwidth, language and processes of the technology provider and the demands of their existing customer base.

The Cons of DIY Equipment Monitoring Software Development

  • Susceptibility to higher Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and other impacts. The TCO of your DIY equipment monitoring system goes beyond just IT salaries; often the continued energy costs, hardware, security, training, networking, backup, testing and more will make this project far more expensive than commercial applications. Your custom software would also likely be impacted significantly by change: budgetary constraints, shifts in strategic objectives and corporate systems and policies, personnel movements and other factors. As a dedicated technology business to many users, the commercial developer tends to better absorb and rebound from events like employee attrition and economic impacts.
  • Competing departmental prioritiesLess emphasis on contingency and continuity. As an internal project, DIY machine monitoring software can be more prone to decreased attention over time, particularly if the project champion has left for another opportunity or moved to another department. The software and its related documentation and training programs, then, are less likely to stay current or remain relevant as new technology and security protocols are introduced to the business, new machinery is acquired and older machinery is retired or networks are upgraded. In this age of rapid change, software that sits doesn’t help a bit.
  • Forfeiting best practices. Custom software, such as DIY machine monitoring, inherently lacks the benefits that come from applying industry best practices, including data trends across wide swaths of users and equipment types, new AI developments, the latest security standards and other technological advancements that require research, resources and large, varied datasets. The core competency of software vendors often affords them greater focus, expertise, budgets, data access and more to help customers refine their business processes through proven functionality.
  • Shouldering the burden of ongoing maintenance and improvements. New requests for features require manual updates to hardware when working with DIY machine monitoring software. Maintenance technicians, for example, have to update the PLC hardware to capture each additional signal desired by internal management. This step may need to be replicated for each machine tool, which can be time-consuming and requires additional documentation to capture every change. Commercial machine monitoring, on the other hand, enables configuration via a web browser without the need to physically walk to the equipment.

In this age of rapid change, software that sits doesn’t help a bit.

Custom machine monitoring applications tend to be rigid in design, requiring a multitude of support tickets to increase flexibility as users engage with the software over months and years. Commercial equipment monitoring solution providers, alternatively, configure the System Resource Controller (SRC) and deploy changes easily. Their solutions tend to be out-of-the-box configurable for user control of reports, charts, and dashboards based on your machine brands. Software developers also have streamlined processes in place to accommodate continued development schedules and software enhancement and integration requests.

A DIY approach to equipment monitoring software can appear practical, especially for manufacturers with in-house IT development. But it’s important to look beyond upfront factors to include the entire scope of such a project, so that your TCO encompasses all opportunity costs, barriers necessary to overcome and anticipated internal and external changes that will impact short- and long-term development. After all, a deviation from core competency can be a costly mistake for manufacturers already reeling from downtime and production loss.

Ransomware on CNC Machines
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Building Resistance into Aged CNC Machines

How CNC program transfers can overcome the vulnerabilities of SMB1 for greater security and efficiency

It took mere hours. In May of 2017, a devastating ransomware cryptoworm called WannaCry impacted more than 200,000 computers across 150 countries, ultimately amassing over $4 billion in damages. Only months later, a variation of this worm spread to 10,000 machines in Apple’s single supplier of SoC components for iPads and iPhones, causing a production stoppage for a full day and shipment delays among its major tech customer base. The original worm was halted, but IT services management company Cloudflare asserts that WannaCry attacks continue today.

Ransomware on CNC Machines

The ransomware cryptoworm WannaCry notably affected TSMC, which manufactures processors and other silicon chips for major technology companies such as Qualcomm, AMD and Apple, due to a Windows SMB1 server vulnerability.

Starting with SMB1

What happened to the National Health Service (NHS), FedEx, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and so many others? The WannaCry worm exploited “vulnerabilities in the Windows SMB v1 server to remotely compromise systems, encrypt files and spread to other hosts,” explains a fact sheet from the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC). While patches have since been issued by Microsoft, the software company admits there are still instances in which manufacturers may need to run SMB1:

    1. Your company is running XP or Windows Server 2003 under a custom support agreement
    2. You have old management software that demands admins browse via the “network,” also known as the “network neighborhood” master browser list
    3. You run old multi-function printers with antiquated firmware in order to “scan to share”

For manufacturers experiencing such cases, there are workarounds. SMB1 could be disabled on every system connected to the network, recommends the NCCIC. You can block port 445 (Samba). You can verify that there isn’t any unexpected SMB1 network traffic. You can isolate vulnerable embedded systems. But these options may not necessarily be viable for efficient and protected CNC file transfers among aged equipment.

Transfer CNC Programs on SMB1 Machines

Manufacturers can struggle to disable SMB1 on every machine and still transfer CNC programs efficiently, effectively and securely.

Simplifying Network Setups

An alternate route is to simplify network setups altogether. A modern DNC software, like Predator Secure DNC, enables you to remove Windows shares, corporate domains, workgroups, homegroups, Microsoft SMB, CFS, FTP, DNS, WINS, NETBUI and IPX/SPX within shop floor VLANs, WANs or subnets for DNC or file transfers. This can be especially useful for manufacturers running older CNC equipment with Windows-based controls that lack compatibility with newer operating systems. It can also alleviate the need for system upgrades and service packs to maintain the older versions of Windows.

The original WannaCry worm was halted, but Cloudflare asserts that WannaCry attacks continue today.

In other cases, controllers like Haas classic controllers can be upgraded to another SMB version by contacting the machine tool builder or segmenting the network to address CNC machines that are not upgradable or do not run a Windows operating system. The point is, regardless of your SMB1-dependent machinery environment, you can reduce your ransomware risk while gaining the latest benefits in efficiency and productivity.

An experienced manufacturing integrator possesses the technical expertise to properly assess, assign and execute custom solutions for your company. Contact Shop Floor Automations to understand your full scope of SMB1 options today.

Scrap material in manufacturing - Shop Floor Automations
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Revise Your Revisions: Scrapping the Rework from Poor CNC Production Documentation

Imagine this: as a manufacturer, one of your engineers or CNC programmers has finally completed a product design for a part worth $75,000. They add the files to a USB thumb drive and run it out to the shop floor to upload the design and work instructions for the second shift. Success, he or she thinks. However, one of your team members made a last-minute change to the files without your knowledge. You won’t find out until the prototype is rejected by the customer, scrapping the part and costing your company thousands of dollars, even more time and effort, further project delays, interdepartmental frustration and a dissatisfied customer. Yikes.

Ideal PDM software ties engineering designs, CNC programs and production documentation for full revision control

In reality, manufacturers today have far greater ability to prevent a scenario like this from occurring in the first place. Modern production data management or product data management (PDM) software solutions are specifically designed to manage your manufacturing documentation, like CNC programs, CMM programs, machine offsets, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS), to reduce inaccuracies, improve productivity, security and efficiency and speed up time to market. The revision control features of a well-designed PDM, such as Predator PDM, can allow for revisions per vault item, not per file, allowing you to condense the number of files it takes to run your business. New revisions or status changes are validated once-a-minute on every shop floor PC, and the correct program and work instructions may be selected from a pick list tied with the job scheduled in your ERP or MES system – all features to ensure the right CNC production documentation is sent to the right job at the right time.

Proper PDM software aids the CNC program and documentation process on the shop floor for less waste, faster time to market, increased productivity and more.

The use of Windows folders and other alternatives to fulfill regulated traceability requirements often fall short of meeting compliance standards.

Compliance Tracking for CNC Production Documentation

“Manufacturers and their industry partners are becoming greater generators and consumers of data output from their operations, particularly as automation increases,” wrote the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in late 2023. As regulatory bodies, such as the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), Department of Defense (DoD), and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) seek to control this data collection and consumption movement, manufacturers are responsible for tracking, restricting and proving the path of all production documentation. Applying traditional means, like pen and paper, text files or Windows folders, to meet the latest traceability requirements lack the revision control, visibility and reliability to fulfill such mandates. Even USB thumb drive usage can be significantly limited or prohibited altogether in order to achieve compliance. With so much regulation and new technology available now, how does a manufacturer find and implement an optimal PDM solution?

A partnership with a manufacturing integrator with experience in your industry – be it aerospace, defense, oil and gas, medical device and pharmaceuticals or another industrial sector – and a broad software and hardware portfolio can help you better navigate options to institute effective and compliant processes to deliver profitable products. Contact a manufacturing expert at Shop Floor Automations to help reduce time to market, decrease waste and enhance the security of your CNC production documentation by visiting shopfloorautomations.com now.

IMTS 2024 attendees can visit Shop Floor Automations for manufacturing integration solutions and support
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Map Your Show with this IMTS 2024 Exhibitor Lineup

“Everything we have today is the result of going to Chicago, walking through those doors of IMTS, and seeing all the amazing technology. It’s a great atmosphere. It’s like walking into a living room that’s set up as a CNC shop with people smiling and ready to help you.” 

 — Ashley Miller, Co-owner, ARC EDM 

For those who attended the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) 2022, like Miller, they know that there was plenty to keep over 86,000 registrants from 110 countries interested in the 1,816 exhibitors. IMTS 2024 promises much more, with many new product launches and networking connections anticipated over the course of the six-day event.

Visit Shop Floor Automations at IMTS 2024 in Chicago

New Products, New Connections

ZOLLER (booth #432018), for one, plans to introduce its >>coraMeasure LG<< automated tool measurement system to improve tool measurement precision and speed by delivering tools to a linear robot that removes tools from the pallet and moves them to a ZOLLER >>venturion<< presetting and measuring machine. Each tool is identified with the ZOLLER >>dChip<< system and tool data is stored in the ZOLLER z.One database and accessible anywhere.

The new HAIMER (Booth #431510) Automation Cube One will also make its debut at IMTS 2024. This fully automatic robotic cell can shrink fit a tool, measure it and send the data to the machine tool in just 60 seconds. The Automation Cube One features a FANUC cobot for handling of tool assemblies and a Siemens Sinumerik One CNC control.

IMTS machine monitoring exhibitor Shop Floor Automations

DataXchange, available through IMTS machinoe monitoring exhibitor Shop Floor Automations, has released new protocol for supported equipment brands, including Okuma, Heidenhain and Siemens.

For those exploring machine monitoring and data collection solutions, Scytec Consulting (Booth #133240) has released new protocol for machine brands like Okuma, Heidenhain and Siemens to connect more data points for greater depth and analysis of equipment on the shop floor with its DataXchange equipment monitoring software. The added collection of Siemens spindle speed rates, for example, can help identify faults for better finish and surface quality due to consistent cutting speed at the tool cutting edge.

The partnership between Scytec and CGTech’s VERICUT® takes machine monitoring a step further through digital twins to simulate your manufacturing environment and identify the presence of variances before production begins on the floor, thereby minimizing or eliminating non-conformances and rework. Attendees seeking an IMTS machine monitoring exhibitor will have first access to the latest Post Check feature of CNC Machine Connect, in which users may replay stored, live-streamed data from the program for even greater visibility and predictive accuracy of your simulations.

IMTS 2024 attendees can visit Shop Floor Automations for manufacturing integration solutions and support

Greg Mercurio, president of manufacturing integrator Shop Floor Automations, says that “It’s the relationships that we start and build at IMTS that make the show such a vital experience. Not only are we able to demonstrate the latest advances in our technology portfolio, but our deep customer connections allow us to match the right solution and service to their environment so they can focus on their producing high-quality product.”

To plan your IMTS show with these exhibitors and others, visit www.imts.com.

Equipment monitoring ERP - Scytec DataXchange
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Integrating Equipment Data with ERP for Bigger Business Benefits

Maintenance, particularly on the shop floor, involves expensive machinery – which translates into high costs for actions like repair work. These costs can represent anywhere from 15-70% of expenses, says IEEE. But maintenance costs may not even be the biggest liability.

 

Equipment monitoring ERP - Scytec DataXchange

Inefficient maintenance processes, like manual data collection, contribute to unplanned downtime and costs, according to Forbes.

For companies with strict quality standards and challenging customer expectations, the cost of a nonconformance, rework or even rejection can be enough to draw the attention of executives due to the shipping, additional labor, materials and reallocated machine time required to correct the defective product. This says nothing of the damage to the customer relationship and the impact on their own tight schedule. It behooves manufacturers, then, to ensure shop floor equipment is always performing optimally with minimal downtime.

The Move Past Manual Downtime Tracking

To do so effectively, manufacturing machinery must be continuously monitored. Today’s smart factory showcases plants with modern machine monitoring software, like Scytec DataXchange, which replaces previous steps of manually tracking, handwriting or physically keying in cycle times, set up times, downtimes, costs and reason codes, and then piecing this data together to understand trends, performance and opportunities for improved efficiency. While these manual processes were time- and labor-intensive to compile, report and analyze, they were also often riddled with inaccuracies, in addition to the time delays that further hinder a company’s ability to react quickly. In fact, Forbes specifically cites these types of inefficient maintenance processes as bad attributes that contribute to unplanned downtime and costs.

Bigger Business Benefits

The utilization of equipment monitoring software becomes crucial, therefore, for businesses working towards the goal “to prolong production performance until it reaches a point that the machine requires complete replacement due to wear and tear or technology change, if justified,” writes Salman Taghizadegan in Essentials of Lean Six Sigma. But the benefits of equipment monitoring systems extend past precise predictive maintenance. Through Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) integration, ideal machine monitoring software can capture and populate data, like these, for an even bigger business-wide impact:

  • Actual set-up and run times. By comparing your estimates to your actuals, you’ll increase the accuracy of your job costing to give you a better handle on your margins and overall profitability. The visibility afforded by these actual times will allow for easier and more reliable planning and scheduling, as staffing requirements become predictable.
  • Machine statuses. Uptime and downtime records and notifications to maintenance, production and management can ensure service is planned for and executed when – and exactly – as needed.
  • Completed quantity. Inventory of raw materials, intermediates and finished goods can be affected in real-time by machine processing, as it occurs.
  • Scrap quantity. Material requirements may be altered based on the volume of actual scrap produced, adding to the dependability of planning and scheduling.
  • Scrap codes. Opportunities to reduce waste may be presented through reason code analysis.

Integrate Machine Monitoring with ERP

While machine monitoring software offers a lot towards optimal maintenance management, its integration with ERP is the lift that expands the effect of equipment data across the enterprise to grant clearer visibility into production, inventory, accounting, lean, planning, scheduling – and yes, maintenance – to help drive greater consistency into each process for more effective decision-making. Learn more about connecting your ERP with machine monitoring software by contacting a Shop Floor Automations representative today.

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Why You Should Skip Free DNC Software

Shop floor employee working on a laptop in front of a CNC Control

The benefits of DNC software when it comes to managing your CNC programs, machine parameters, and offsets are well known. As a result, many businesses look to offer some form of DNC software or their own, ranging from thousands of dollars to absolutely free. While free DNC software options may seem like a great deal, the limitations they create are often detrimental to your business.

As professional manufacturing integrators for over 20 years, Shop Floor Automations has seen and experienced both the good and the bad DNC software options out there, and now we want to share some of the things we’ve learned about free DNC options with you. Below, we’ll outline exactly why you should look to invest in your business’s success and skip free DNC software.

Drawbacks of Free DNC Software

In short, free DNC software is simply incapable of offering the same value you can expect from full versions. While perhaps useful in the short term for the smallest of shops, those free options won’t be able to deliver any worthwhile benefit if you’re looking to increase your capabilities and production rates. Let’s dive further into a few of the major limitations.

              Lack of Capability & Flexibility

Free DNC software almost always comes with limitations on both the types of machines and programmed instructions it can support. If you are looking to connect various types of machines performing several unique functions, your free software option won’t keep up. Instead, choose an option that allows you to connect any brand, type, and age of CNC machine to ensure your software can grow alongside your business.

              Inability to Grow with You

One of DNC software’s significant benefits is its powerful ability to increase production rates easily and rapidly. While a free version may work for you now, it will severely limit the number of machines you can connect. Anything more than a small handful of devices is going to demonstrate the limitations of free software immediately. In addition, newer machines with Ethernet connection are left out and you will be forced to use other software to manages these machines.  As you begin growing, your needs will quickly outpace the capabilities of any free DNC software option you choose.

Does Free DNC Software Offer Any Value?

Free DNC software options are not all bad. If you are relatively new to the world of DNC software, it may be beneficial to try one of these free options out for a few weeks. While it will not give you anywhere near a clear image of what exactly DNC software is capable of, it can be an effective way to dip your toe in the water. However, we don’t recommend relying on a free option for any extended amount of time. Keep in mind, if you need support or help getting your CNC machine communicating, it usually endss up costing you more since there is no one to call and support is left to an email address with hopes a timely response is provided.

Invest in Your Success with DNC Software

Improving your CNC networking, securing ethernet transfers, combining with PDM for CNC revision control, and integrating with other manufacturing automation software: these are the benefits you can expect from true DNC software. Investing in this software now means upgrading your capabilities, your productivity, and your overall profitability.

Interested in True DNC Software? Try the Real Deal For Yourself.

Whether you have grown frustrated with the abilities of your free DNC software or want to try DNC software for the first time, Shop Floor Automations is here to help. We offer a 30-day software trial run to help you test out the software and be sure it meets your needs.

After discussing your current system and needs, we will work together to help you configure a few of your machines, give you an overview of the interface, and validate bi-direction communication for the full extent of the 30 days. From there, we will let you run things, giving you a chance to truly experience the software without intervention. Participating in this trial comes at no charge, and there is no obligation to purchase the software after the trial ends. Just complete this form, and we’ll walk you through the rest!

We look forward to helping automate your shop floor!

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Monitor Machines in addition to CNC’s such as Plasma Cutters, Ovens, Grinders, Autoclaves and more

Shop Floor Automations (SFA), has been a leader in the realm of working with CNC machines to connect them to DNC or to add A Dynatorch plasma cutting machine at work, one of the many types of machines that are compatible with machine monitoring technology.Machine Monitoring to them. Since many shops have a wide variety of machines to handle various needs, it is important to know what we can connect far more than just CNC’s.

The core benefits of machine monitoring still apply to Plasma Cutters, Ovens, Grinders and more.

  • Uptime reporting
  • Operator assignment stuff
  • Other things that still apply to non CNC’s

With LAN-USB, network outage protection also occurs via a local server to CNC connection that is independent of the shop floor’s network. The USB function of the device allows it to act as an interface between commercially available USB sticks and any CNC control with a functioning RS232 port. Machine programs can be sent from the CNC memory to the USB stick, USB to CNC memory, or can be drip-fed (DNC) from the USB.

A shot of a shop floor, featuring various production machines that are set up on a machine monitoring network.Flexible CNC communication firmware is built into the unit. This allows for a connection to a large variety of machine tool controls. The device buffers the entire program at the machine, and acts as a dedicated computer that responds instantaneously to data flow changes from the CNC.

Positioning this device on the control allows the machine to run at its maximum baud rate. This will prevent a machinist from having to walk back and forth from the DNC PC to the machine in order to initiate machine operation. This important feature allows the LAN-USB to increase your shop floor efficiency by maximizing productivity and reducing downtime.

Find out if we can connect all of your machines.

You can call us at (877) 611-5825 or email us at info@shopfloorautomations.com or complete the form below and we’ll contact you. Once we help you add monitoring to your machines, we’ll support you with our industry leading support team!

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Paperless Manufacturing

A desk with many piles of paper scattered over it, which can be fixed by going paperless with the use of computers and PDM software.

Many machinists, production managers, and other shop floor workers wish they had paperless manufacturing. It feels like an impossible pipe dream to them.

It may be trendy to do so, but we wish to quote organizational expert Marie Kondo. Her insight is wonderful when thinking of taking on the daunting task of going paperless.

“People cannot change their habits without first changing their way of thinking,” Marie says in her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. “Clutter is caused by a failure to return things to where they belong. Therefore, storage should reduce the effort needed to put things away – not the effort needed to get them out.”

Other than the need to be organized, there are far more important reasons to go paperless. Digital revision control, being prepared for audits and keeping track of crucial documentation also weigh heavy on our daily processes.

Yes, the task of going paperless can take time. But it is not an impossible task. Shop Floor Automations has even successfully gone paperless!

There is also a terrific article written by Eli Plaskett of Modern Machine Shop on this topic. His December 2018 piece “Turning the Page on the Paper Workplace” details a few steps to achieve this goal.

First, analyze how to give your workforce digital access to files as appropriate.
Invest in a scanner – for existing paperwork and whatever paperwork comes in the hereafter, scan immediately. Train employees to get into the habit of scanning.

Then, install tablets, network computers or digital station work devices. The next step is to train the workers fully on how to use the system. Show them the ways the system works for their benefit to save time.

Set up simple instructions such as photographing a setup. If you use ERP Software (which integrates with quite a few of our solutions), it can often have tools to enable photos attached with set up instructions or photos via an ERP smartphone app.

SFA has many solutions to help you cut your dependency on paper. We have USB hardware that can store programs in flash drives, and we highly recommend investing in PDM.

Ready to start the conversation? Call (877) 611-5825 or fill out our contact form

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Connect CNC Machine to Computer

A laptop running machine monitoring software connected to various CNC machines. In the background is a large blue gear and a clip art factory building.

Machinists looking to connect CNC machines to computers have different needs. Perhaps they want to monitor OEE, or they want to send programs remotely.

Here are the top three solutions for connecting equipment to your shop floor computer or laptop:

DNC Software – Making sure programs are sent to the machine, as well as revision control and complete CNC networking can be accomplished with one system. DNC (or drip-feeding) is done via parallel, RS232, RS422 Ethernet, or wireless Ethernet for thousands of your machines. Control programs from the shop floor PC.

Machine monitoring – Manufacturers want their machine data, and they have a need to see it beyond standing at the machine. Seeing OEE on computers in back offices, or on real-time viewers, or even on the go via laptops or smart phones, are all possibilities.

Hardware – You want to make sure your software interacts with the shop floor environment. Wireless and wired hardware will help with PC to CNC transfers. Modified PLCs will help to grab data off of old machines. Older laptops can be connected to CNCs with the USB to Serial plus an RS232 cable. There are so many possibilities!

Want to convert your RS232 port into USB? Need to replace floppy disks? Want to go paperless? We can help with that, too!

Fill out our online contact form or call (877) 611-5825. We can’t wait to start the conversation!

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Manufacturing News

A long standing publication with a classic newspaper vibe – we are proud to have been featured in Manufacturing News many times. The issues focus on different regions and their varying Made in America goals.

Here are some recent pieces that Manufacturing News have featured us in:

Our case study with R & D Manco in Arizona appears in the December 2018 issue. This manufacturer previously had experience with our CNC Editor software and our hardware. However, they implemented an on-premise machine monitoring system after a pilot program. Because of this, they boosted their productivity in a short period of time.

Proving return on investment for automation solutions can be complicated. Because of this, we created an article for decision makers on how to lay these details out. Some pieces of valuable information in this process are equipment compatibility, evaluating processes and having alternative options available. This article appears in the November 2018 issue.

The medical manufacturing industry is a very high-volume business. We constantly work with these shops to find the best automation solutions for them. Specifically, we always recommend OEE (overall equipment efficiency) monitoring. The top four benefits to this software appear in the April 2018 issue.

Check out our other articles on similar manufacturing solutions. Ready to start the conversation about shop floor automation? Call (877) 611-5825 or fill out an online contact form