Production monitoring: methods and automatic data collection

Production monitoring is the ongoing collection of what is happening on the shop floor: which machines are running, which are standing, why, which program and job are in progress, and how many parts are done. Useful production monitoring shows this at the time, not the next day from sheets copied into a spreadsheet.

Below we compare three ways to monitor production, list what you can take from the machine and from the operator, and show how production monitoring works in Scout MES, together with production scheduling and the operator panel.

What is production monitoring?

Production monitoring is a continuous measurement of machines and people on the shop floor, set against the plan. It answers three questions: what is happening now, what happened on the previous shift, and why a machine stopped. In a MES such as Scout, the data comes from the control, so nobody has to write it down.

Production monitoring is not the same as real-time machine monitoring. Machine monitoring tells you the state of each machine. Production monitoring adds jobs, operators, shifts and the plan. Without that context, a status of “running” or “idle” does not tell a supervisor which job is waiting.

Production monitoring methods: by hand, by camera or from a MES

Method	How it works	When the data is available	Weak points
By hand (job cards, spreadsheets)	The operator writes times, parts and stops at the end of the shift	After the shift, often days later	Memory, mistakes, short stops disappear, someone has to retype it
Camera	A picture of the shop on a screen	At once, but only as a picture	Someone has to watch; a camera does not name the program or count finished parts
Automatic, from a MES	The system reads the control	In real time	The machines need a LAN; some controls need an option on the machine

We use the third method: automatic production monitoring from the machine itself. The figures are in the system at once, and the operator only adds what the machine cannot know: the job, the part result and the reason for the stop.

What data does automatic production monitoring collect?

Data straight from the machine

From a CNC or a PLC, Scout reads, among other things:

• status: running, idle, offline, and since when;
• the program or recipe in progress, and through it the job;
• speeds, for example feed, spindle speed or line speed;
• feed and spindle override;
• alarms;
• on some controls, a part counter and spindle load;
• selected values from the PLC memory.

The set depends on the control. The lists sit on the CNC machine connectivity pages.

Data from the operator

Some facts never leave the control, because they were never in it. On the operator panel, on a tablet or a PC at the machine, the operator picks the job, marks the part OK or NOK, and reports a changeover or a breakdown. A call for material, or a breakdown call, can also come from a BIOS-UX-02 andon box with four buttons. Scout joins that input with the machine data, so a stop has a reason, not only a duration.

What you see during the shift

• The shop, live. Each machine has a coloured status, the employee, the job and the current process values. The view can go on a television on the floor.
• History. The timeline shows states, stops, the program, the operator and the job for the period you pick.
• OEE software calculates availability, performance and quality for the machine, the shift, the employee and the job.
• Machine downtime alerts go out by e-mail or SMS when a machine stands too long or a value leaves its range. Push notifications are configured for each deployment.

That is production monitoring in practice: the supervisor does not walk the floor with a notebook to find which machine stopped, since when, and why.

How production monitoring works in Scout

Scout reads the controller over the factory LAN. For each control we use its protocol (for example FOCAS2 on Fanuc) or a standard such as OPC UA, MTConnect or Modbus TCP. On supported CNC and PLC controls that are already on the LAN, we do not fit sensors and we do not open the electrical cabinet.

SCT (Scout Configuration Tool) receives the data: a set of console applications that run in the background as Windows services on a PC or server in your network. SCT sends the data to Scout over HTTPS. The machines do not need internet access. The path is described under machine data collection.

Which machines can be connected?

Machine	How we read it	Examples
CNC machine tools	From the control, over the LAN	Fanuc, Heidenhain, Siemens, Haas, Mazak, OKUMA, Mitsubishi, Citizen, DMG MORI, OSAI, cncGraF / InfoCAM
Lines and machines on a PLC	From the PLC or through a standard	Siemens S7 (S7 TCP), Beckhoff (TwinCAT), Omron (FINS, C-Mode), Modbus TCP, OPC UA, MQTT
Robots	From the robot control	Fanuc robots, Yaskawa
Lasers, press brakes and other machines with their own control	From the control, a status or a production file	Trumpf Laser, Bystronic, Kimla UDP, Safan, Delem
Conventional machines (no CNC)	BIOS-IO-01 digital inputs, for example a run signal from the signal tower, over the LAN	Legacy machine monitoring
Welders	BIOS-CT-01 detects that the welder is working from its current draw; data goes through BIOS-IO-01 and the LAN	Welding machine monitoring

Some controls are ready once the machine is on the LAN. Others need an option on the machine. Mazak needs the MTConnect option. If a Siemens Sinumerik has no OPC UA option, we read it over S7 TCP. Before we start, we check your machines and propose the connection. We do not publish a fixed count of controls.

How to start production monitoring

1. A machine list. Write down the machines, their controls and their IP addresses on the LAN.
2. A Windows PC. Prepare a PC or server on the same network (Windows 8/10 or Windows Server 2012 or later, .NET Framework 4.8, 2 cores, 4 GB RAM) and give us temporary remote access.
3. Configuration. We do the rest remotely: we install and configure SCT, and we connect popular CNC controls within minutes.
4. The trial. For 14 days you run Scout MES on your own machines, at no cost and with no obligation. Prices are on the pricing page.

Scout MES already monitors over 1,900 machines for over 130 customers. If you want the wider picture of how monitoring is rolled out, start with the guide to automatic machine monitoring. Guides on this subject are collected under production monitoring and planning.

On this topic

• Production planning in 4 steps — how shop-floor data turns into the next plan.

Questions

Related

Feature

Production scheduling

Production scheduling in Scout MES: shifts, jobs and planned offline time in a calendar, linked with data from your machines. See how it works.

About Scout

How Scout works

Machine data collection in Scout MES: reading from the CNC or PLC control over the LAN, SCT as Windows services and HTTPS. No internet access for machines.

Guide

Production planning in 4 steps

A plan that matches the shop floor: prepare the work, choose the tools, monitor the machines and correct the next plan from real data.