Mazak MTConnect Enables Florence, Kentucky Plant

This is REALLY big news!  This is a great news for Mazak and MTConnect!  

Here are some snippets from the press release.

"In implementing the protocol into the Kentucky operations, Mazak continues its MTConnect leadership and demonstrates its commitment to the protocol as a powerful tool for all manufacturers to improve productivity, machine utilization and efficiency. Mazak has been an ardent supporter of MTConnect since its inception, offering all its machines with MTConnect compatibility. Currently, over 100 Mazak customers are at various stages of MTConnect integration within their own facilities involving approximately 300 machines within a wide range of model types."

“We continue to take a leadership position in propagating the MTConnect open protocol,” said Brian Papke, president of Mazak Corporation. “MTConnect’s value to our customers is in the ability for them to establish extensive and open channels of communication for plug-and-play interconnectivity between devices. MTConnect allows software to be universally applied between different types of machine models so that information is readily available for improving machine tool utilization. Using this capability, Mazak is taking another positive step in further increasing the productivity of our North American operations and ensuring the strong competitiveness of our
Kentucky manufacturing.”

 "According to Neil Desrosiers, Mazak’s developer of digital solutions, the full improvement potential resulting from MTConnect at the Kentucky plant will be achieved when the measurement data is collected and full potential machine tool utilization is realized in the factory."

Canadian Industrial Machinery Article - The Internet Comes to Manufacturing

Joe Thompson wrote a great article for Canadian Industrial Machinery that was titled:

The Internet Comes to Manufacturing

The digital age has arrived on the shop floor, increasing process speed, reducing nonproductive time.

It was published on July 10, 2013

Joe starts off the article with, "If data is being collected, then it should be used. And, once again,new technology enables this."

Joe goes on to say, "Imagine anywhere, anytime access to all facets of your manufacturing process."

Note: The photo to the right is from the article.

As I am quoted in the article by Joe, "Unless you have been in the computer industry for a couple of decades, chances are that cloud computing is difficult to comprehend and very misunderstood,” explained Dave Edstrom, CEO and CTO of Virtual Photons Electrons, Ashburn, Va.

Edstrom also is the author of MTConnect: To Measure Is To Know, a book that addresses how open-source, royalty-free standards systems can revolutionize the business of manufacturing.

Cloud computing has potential to be game-changing technology in manufacturing for everyone from small shops to extremely large manufacturing plants. The key is understanding the process, asking the right questions, and making wise decisions.

“Cloud computing is important for manufacturing because it allows companies to avoid the countless business and technical issues associated with running their own data centers and save money by paying only for the computing resources when they need it on a pay-as-you-go model,” said Edstrom."

 Above were just snippets, please go check out Joe's great article and thanks to Joe Thompson and the great folks at Canadian Industrial Machinery!