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
- The Three A’s of MTConnect – the Adapter, the Agent and the App – 10 Minute Webcast that explains the three major components of MTConnect very clearly and concisely.
MTConnect Home, Source Code, Member Listing and MTConnect Standard Download Location
- MTConnect is the main site for all things MTConnect
- github.com/MTConnect is where all of the source code and binaries for MTConnect are located.
- The MTConnect Users Portal (MTCUP) is a great site for FAQs and to ask questions as well.
- Here is a link to the full roster of MTConnect members. This might be helpful when you are considering partnering or want to know who is officially part of MTConnect.
- Here is where you can download the 6 parts of the MTConnect standard.
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?
- Getting Started with MTConnect: Connectivity Guide
- In terms of legacy connectivity and create your own or partner, it would be worthwhile to at least understand what MEMEX's MTC-One is capable of before you invest a lot of time and money into creating your own legacy hw/sw black box. There are other connectivity devices out there, such as Mazak's SmartBox where MEMEX brought together Cisco and Mazak for the three companies to work together on legacy connectivity.
- 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.
MTConnect: To Measure Is To Know (my book - Dave Edstrom - of COURSE! :-) Available in ALL formats
How Can I Easily Try Out MTConnect?
- agent.MTConnect.org — this is where the MTConnect simulator is running. You can just type this into your browser and give simple commands such as:
- http://agent.MTConnect.org/probe
- http://agent.MTConnect.org/current
- http://agent.MTConnect.org/sample
- The MTConnect page at MEMEX is something I put together that has lots of MTConnect educational links and videos. There is a FREE Shop Floor Monitor that talks to ANY MTConnect device called MERLIN OPTime, as well as an MTConnect Agent Configuration Tool called MTCACT
- Using Excel as a simple monitor for MTConnect - this is a short webinar that I show you how to use Excel as a simple monitor for MTConnect. It shows just how easy it is to talk to an MTConnect device.
How To Demonstrate Eight MTConnect Simulators To One MTConnect Agent
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.
- An 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 Mazak, Okuma, DMG MORI and others where you can go to their homepage and search for MTConnect.
Security and MTConnect
- Security is very important for manufacturing and here is a presentation by Bryce Barnes of Cisco and myself titled:Manufacturing Cyber-Physical Security Presentation at [MC]2 2016. Here is the DropBox to the location of the presentation.
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!
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