New white paper, “Getting Started with MTConnect – Shop Floor Monitoring, What’s in it for You?”

Below is the press release that came out from the MTConnect Institute on Thursday May 30, 2013.   Dave McPhail was the chair and I was the co-chair along with a very talented group of individuals whose companies are listed below in the press release.

The MTConnect Institute announces a new white paper, “Getting Started with MTConnect – Shop Floor Monitoring, What’s in it for You?” This white paper demonstrates the tangible benefits of monitoring a manufacturing plant using MTConnect, the open and royalty-free standard, as the way to collect data and information from the shop floor.

MTConnect is a set of open, royalty-free standards intended to foster greater interoperability between manufacturing controls, devices and software applications by publishing data over networks using the Internet Protocol.
The white paper discusses the almost limitless ways companies can use the data obtained via MTConnect to improve operations, track production and justify decisions that affect plant operations. Some of the common uses for shop floor data and topics covered in the paper include:

• •Production Dashboard;
• •Monitor Alerts; Equipment Availability and Usage;
• •Overall Equipment Effectiveness;
• •Production Reporting/Tracking;
• •Energy Conservation;
• •Mobile:  Anywhere, Anytime Access to Plant Floor Information;
• •Quality and Statistical Process Control;
• •Data Mining;
• •Genealogy; and
• •Security.

“The first and most obvious application for MTConnect is monitoring the shop floor to gather data, learn and make improvements based upon that knowledge. This white paper is written for the shop owner, plant manager or CEO,and focuses on the business-related features and benefits of MTConnect,” says Dave Edstrom, president and chairman of the board for the MTConnect Institute and the CEO/CTO of Virtual Photons Electrons.

David McPhail, president and CEO of Memex Automation and Chairman of the MTConnect Shop Floor Monitoring Working Group states, “As vendors of shop floor monitoring systems, we are often asked by prospective customers ‘what’s in it for me?’ and ‘how do I specifically benefit from an expenditure in monitoring my shop floor operations?’. This white paper answers those questions directly and our hope is that it creates the desire for prospective users to move from thought to action. The uses of data collected from the shop floor are vast, create immense business value, and should appeal to a wide array of end users.

This guide was created by the MTConnect Shop Floor Monitoring Working Group, made up of members of the MTConnect Institute Technical Advisory Group, with McPhail as the working group Chairman and Edstrom as its Co-Chairman. Working group members are a mix of MTConnect software and hardware solution providers, as well as end users who have real-life experience with MTConnect at their manufacturing facilities:

• •Memex Automation Inc. (Chair)
• •General Dynamics – OTS
• •Scytec Consulting Inc.
• •MacKintok Inc.
• •Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology, Inc.  (CCAT) 
• •Task Force Tips
• •Remmele Engineering, Inc.
• •System Insights, Inc.
• •Virtual Photons Electrons, LLC (Co-Chair)

The ‘Monitoring Your Shop Floor’ white paper is the companion document to the MTConnect Institute’s ‘Connectivity Guide’ white paper. The ‘Monitoring Your Shop Floor’ white paper provides the ‘why,’ and the ‘Connectivity Guide’ provides the ‘how.’ Together these two white papers provide businesses with a complete explanation of the benefits of using MTConnect as the conduit to monitoring a shop or plant.

Both white papers are available at MTConnect.org under GettingStarted/WhitePapers/Manufacturers.