Reduce labor hours by remote maintenance and error recovery for production equipment

As an increasing number of electronic components are used in automobiles, a wide range of automotive electronic components are required. In order to satisfy the needs, an automotive electronic components manufacturer with many production plants at home and abroad adopted the Pro-face SP5000 Series operator interface. We interviewed a production equipment engineer who develops manufacturing equipment in plants and gives technical assistance and guidance for operating the equipment. He installs newly developed equipment and launches its production lines.

When a new plant is built, he designs a basic production line and manages introduction and planning of equipment. At the same time, he responds to inquiries about production equipment and devices from each production site, and he also inspects and improves production equipment and devices. He wants to launch new equipment as soon as possible and make its operation stable. However, inquiries about new equipment launched from the production sites and maintenance work take much of his time.

Besides, when he has to go all the way to plants located across the country, it takes time and cost. He had considered remote maintenance to allow him to do maintenance of production equipment located at each production plant while staying in the office, but he hesitated to make a decision due to concerns about reliability. Finally, he introduced the SP5000 Series that enables remote maintenance with peace of mind. That led to considerable reduction in maintenance work time.

Challenges before installation

Problems occurring after new equipment is installed or during the maintenance programming require time and effort to go to the site to solve.

To increase production efficiency or change specifications of the product to be manufactured, a maintenance program of the introduced equipment is installed. If I had an operator on site install it and a problem occurred, it would cause a big loss, so I have to go to each site and made adjustments myself however small the problem is. It was difficult to adjust schedules with the production sites before a visit and also going around our plants in the country took a lot of time and made my working schedule tight.

In addition, when I received inquiries related with the introduced equipment such as troubleshooting, I responded to them via mail or phone at first, but we often made no progress, so I ended up going to the site to cope with it. I went all the way to the site, but the problem was very simple and easily solved mostly. I often said to myself, “Did I really have to come here?” and felt stressed.

Solutions through installation

Remote maintenance reduces labor time more than half.
HMI relieves concerns about communication trouble.

A new project was started for developing and installing automatic assembling equipment for a new product production line - a small, light, waterproof connecter for connection between electric cables. SP5000 Series sales started when this assembling equipment was in the design phase. The SP5000 Series was a high-spec device considered as an HMI for this automatic assembling equipment.

Then, a Pro-face sales representative came to make a new proposal about remote monitoring because we had talked about it once before. When I considered remote monitoring before, control device manufacturers offered their own software that enabled remote monitoring and debugging and I confirmed remote maintenance for an individual device was possible.

But what worried me was that a communication error might occur and the equipment might not run when uploading the equipment’s program, so I could not make a decision. None of the control device manufacturers provided software that enabled remote maintenance at that time. That was another hurdle. I saw possibilities in Pro-face HMI because it allowed you to check status of all the connected devices. But it had not yet allowed to perform debugging over a network. That sales representative remembered it and recommended SP5000 Series because SP5000 Series might be able to clear those hurdles. Then I started considering adoption of SP5000.

Points of consideration

Using applications of all connected devices over a network

This production equipment engineer installed maintenance applications of the PLC, the servo driver, and the other devices in the SP5000 Series, which is the HMI of the equipment, and accessed the HMI with the applications installed from the PC in the office with using a remote desktop application. Even if a network error occurs between the PC and the HMI, communication between the HMI and each device will not be affected because the program file remains on the HMI.

That means you don’t have to worry that a program cannot be correctly installed and equipment won’t run. He actually conducted a test and confirmed that this operation could be done without delay caused by communication or any stress. Finally he decided to introduce the SP5000 Series.

Testimonial from the supervisor

Site maintenance visits frequency is reduced by half.

I used to visit some production sites about 7 to 10 days every month, but the frequency is now once every two months. The company gave me an award for this equipment and I appreciated it. I’m going to install the SP5000 Series on the other lines and equipment in the future and I expect considerable reduction in maintenance work time.

Also, overseas development is being considered. I think many production equipment engineers have the same trouble. I’d like them to consider adopting the SP5000 Series as a solution.

Nguồn: www.proface.com