Saturday, December 2, 2017

Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer of Ashburn and Tim's Gingerbread Man


There are two items that are a must in the Edstrom family every Christmas - one is outside and the other is inside.  Outside it is THE Deer of Ashburn and inside it is Tim's Gingerbread Man.

Below was the first rev of THE Deer when I found it in my neighbor Rick's trash.  I did not ask for permission to take it (Rick later said I am always welcome to take anything in his trash :-) and quickly mounted it on my son John's Taurus (the famous Sun Microsystems $1 million Ford Taurus)  John was not amused and ordered it off before he drove it to high school that morning.



Now I needed to find a purpose for the deer and then it hit me, the ultimate Christmas Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer of Ashburn!

It is always nice to see the line of cars several miles long in Ashburn as they wait in line to see Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer of Ashburn :-)


The inside ornament that is a must is Tim's Gingerbread Man. This always goes in the most visible space on our Christmas tree every year.

The story here is that Tim is 3 years old and the pre-school teacher gives out the Gingerbread Man, glue, some things to glue on there and lots of noodles to glue on.  It normally keeps the kids busy for 20 minutes according to the teacher.  After 1 minute Tim yells, "I'm done!"   The pre-school teacher thought this was priceless and was laughing out loud when she told the story.  She had never seen one like Tim created :-)

The Best of MTConnect FAQs, Presentations, Webinars, Websites and ALL Things MTConnect


This blog post is a culmination of years answering questions on MTConnect that I will keep updated as it is easier to just point individuals to one blog site I have as opposed to multiple blog posts or a very large email with all of these FAQs, Presentations, Webinars, Websites and ALL Things MTConnect.  A lot of this earlier work was when I was President and Chairman of the Board MTConnect Institute.

You can easily share this blog post with https://tinyurl.com/MTConnect-Info


MTConnect is an open, royalty-free standard built to foster interoperability between devices, equipment and systems. Using XML and HTTP, MTConnect defines, structures, and exposes real-time data throughout a factory.  Unlike previous interoperability attempts, MTConnect’s common communication and data dictionary empowers software developers to implement applications aimed at providing more efficient operations, improved production optimization and increased productivity.   MTConnect is elegant because of its simple and scalable design.

Think of MTConnect as the “Bluetooth for manufacturing” with the clear goal of “Different Devices, COMMON Connection”.   MTConnect has become the default interconnectivity fabric to enable manufacturing dashboards to understand exactly what is happening in a plant or shop, an M2M communication mechanism and a simple, yet elegant way to implement IoT or the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). IIoT has been predicted to be tens of billions of dollars per year with manufacturing being a large percentage of that market.

Give Me A 10 Minute Overview of MTConnect

MTConnect Home, Source Code, Member Listing and MTConnect Standard Download Location



How Can I Join MTConnect?
  • MTConnect is royalty-free, open source, free to join and free to deploy
  • There are two types of members
    • Implementors
    • Technical Advisory Group (TAG) members
  • How can I join the MTConnect Institute?

Why Should I Join The MTConnect Institute?

 John Byrd, former President of AMT, summarized the significance, “MTConnect will be more important for manufacturing in the 21st century, then CNC was in the 20th century.  Brian Papke, former President of Mazak USA, stated the financial importance, "The implementation of MTConnect is one of the simplest and fastest ways to improve productivity and increase machine utilization.  Mazak's MTConnect implementation provided the highest ROI for any capital investment because of the significant increase in utilization of equipment for a very moderate expenditure."


A sample of global companies which joined MTConnect, that those not in manufacturing have likely heard of, include Boeing, Bosch Rexroth, Cisco, FANUC, Foxconn, GE (Aviation, Global Research, Power, Transportation), General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin Electronic Systems, Mitsubishi Electronic Automation and Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC).  

If you are in manufacturing or WANT to be in manufacturing, then you NEED to join the MTConnect Institute!


What Do I Need To Know About Connecting ALL Of My machine tools, 3D Printers, Sensors and Devices to MTConnect?

 Why Would I Want To Monitor My Shop or Plant?
    While the above two "Getting Started With MTConnect" documents are a little dated, the principles remain and the list of shop floor monitoring companies is still a good list.
  • Here is the video that has Ben Schawe of Mazak speaking on their Factory using MTConnect at the [MC]2 2014 Conference.  It is very compelling and shows the power of MTConnect and shop floor monitoring.  This might be helpful in terms of a machine tool company that is considering to use MTConnect in their own factory with shop floor monitoring by "flying their own planes" or "eating their own dog food" :-)  It should also be noted that Mazak has really expanded with using MTConnect and MERLIN beyond that point to include full OEE, an operator panel, as well as that was an earlier version of MERLIN.
     
 What Is The Best Book On MTConnect?

MTConnect: To Measure Is To Know (my book - Dave Edstrom - of COURSE! :-)  Available in ALL formats


How Can I Easily Try Out MTConnect?
 What if I Want My Company To Implement MTConnect?

MTConnect Implementation Guide Webinar - Machine Tools, Devices and Sensors

 


In the above 40 minute webinar, I provide my personal thoughts on the technical and business issues to be aware of when implementing MTConnect for machine tools, devices or sensors.

The impetus for this webinar is the tremendous amount of interest I have seen globally for companies and individuals who are considering deploying MTConnect enabled machine tools, devices and sensors. 

When I think of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) I think of MTConnect.  The reason for this is that monitoring and data analysis begets more requests for additional information and this can be accomplished by the addition of MTConnect enabled devices and sensors in the plant.

Additional Documents For Those Wanting To Implement MTConnect

  • I put the document, Implementors Guide For Machine Tools, Devices and Sensors that is at my DropBox site since it was over 10MB for those who would like a copy.
  • Device Functionality Group  This is listing of what data items some of the machine tool vendors are supplying would be of interest.  Info that is included is partial machine, control, and adapter support and functionality supplied by builders are listed here. Many additional devices are supported from the factory or via third party adapters, and the MTConnect standard may be extended to cover additional data items.
  • A​n interesting exercise to find out what is available is to go out to some of machine tool makers and see how they setup their MTConnect pages such as MazakOkuma, ​DMG MORI and others where you can go to their homepage and search for MTConnect.
What About OPC and MTConnect?
Security and MTConnect

What If I Have More Questions On MTConnect?
 

  • Leave me a comment on this blog and I will be happy to respond to you directly or will update this blog post or even create an entirely new blog post!