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Procedia CIRP 22 (2014) 92 – 97
3rd International Conference on Through-life Engineering Services
Machine monitoring system based on MTConnect technology
Ben Edrington(1), Bingyan Zhao(1), Adam Hansel(1), Masahiko Mori(2), Makoto Fujishima(2)*
(1)
Digital Technology Laboratory Corp. 3805 Faraday Avenue, Davis, CA 95618, USA
(2)
DMG MORI SEIKI Co., Ltd. 2-35-16 Meieki Nakamura Nagoya Aich 450-0002, Japan
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +81-595-45-5603; fax: +81-595-45-4173.E-mail address: fujisima@dmgmoriseiki.co.jp.
Abstract
The modern manufacturing shop floor contains a variety of different types of machining equipment, each supporting different proprietary
interfaces and communication protocols. This diversity has made it extremely challenging for shop managers to monitor and maintain their
machines. Fortunately, the emerging MTConnect standard makes it possible for a monitoring system to accurately and consistently collect data
from any MTConnect compatible machine, regardless of its brand or origin. This paper introduces a web-based machine monitoring system
that provides data collection, analysis, and machine event notification for MTConnect compatible machines. This solution provides shop
managers with the information needed to improve process efficiency on the shop floor, and increase overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
© 2014
© 2014 The
The Authors.
Authors. Published
Published by
by Elsevier
Elsevier B.V.
B.V.This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Peer-review under responsibility of the Programme Chair of EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Through-life Engineering
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Services. under responsibility of the Programme Chair of the 3rd InternationalThrough-life Engineering Conference
Peer-review
Keywords: Monitoring, CNC machine tool, MTConnect, OEE
1. Introduction
Machine Private Mobile Customer
Manufacturer Network Phone
Remote machine monitoring systems (RMMS) are Machine Tools
Mail Line Network
software products developed by machine manufacturers to 1. Operation History
Server
allow their customers to monitor and maintain their factory 1
2. Remote
floor equipment [1]. Over the last decade, DMG MORI Mobile
Phone 2 Maintenance
SEIKI has provided an RMMS solution called Mori Net, to Database
its customers. Mori Net has allowed customers to monitor Carrier 3 3. Software I/O
their DMG MORI SEIKI machines over a local network
Monitor
(Mori Net LAN Edition) or over the Internet (Mori Net Server Internet
Global Edition) by installing proprietary desktop software NC data I/O
Operation Status of
that runs on a Windows PC. Figure 1 shows the architecture Remote Customer’s Machine
Maintenance Office
of Mori Net Global Edition. Tools
However, Mori Net has been challenged by one of the
realities of the modern factory floor. Namely, that factory Fig.1 The architecture of Mori Net Global Edition
floors tend to incorporate a variety of different machining
equipment, developed by different companies, and each which is based on the MTConnect standard [2]. MTConnect
implementing their own proprietary data communication is a royalty free standard developed and maintained through
protocols. This poses a major challenge to anyone the MTConnect Institute. It is used throughout the machine
attempting to collect machine data, compare it to other tool industry to allow access to machine tool information in
machine data, and determine the status of their machines. a standardized way, over a TCP/IP network.
The key to enabling MTConnect on DMG MORI SEIKI
To overcome this challenge, DMG MORI SEIKI has machines was to build upon DMG MORI SEIKI’s machine
developed a web based RMMS solution called Messenger,
2212-8271 © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the Programme Chair of the 3rd InternationalThrough-life Engineering Conference
doi:10.1016/j.procir.2014.07.148
Ben Edrington et al. / Procedia CIRP 22 (2014) 92 – 97 93
HMI system. All DMG MORI SEIKI machines natively run
an HMI called MAPPS. The MAPPS software itself runs on
an embedded Windows PC, and supports standard Ethernet
networking. This built-in networking capability allows all
DMG MORI SEIKI machines to connect and communicate
with external machine tools, computers in factory floor
offices, and remote monitoring systems (such as Mori Net
and Messenger). By building an MTConnect Adapter into
MAPPS, DMG MORI SEIKI was able to make its old and
new machines MTConnect compatible.
All MTConnect compatible machines can then provide
data to Messenger. Once a machine’s data is collected,
Messenger analyses the data and produces graphical reports
which can be viewed through any modern web browser
(including browsers on mobile and tablet devices). Both
Messenger and Mori Net share a common set of reports,
and
these reports have been tested by Mori Net through
many years of usage on thousands of machines. The
diagnosis and maintenance reports provided by Mori Net
and Messenger have been proven to be efficient and Fig. 2 Basic MTConnect architecture
effective [3][4]. These reports can also be used for overall
equipment effectiveness (OEE), total effective equipment communicate with an MTConnect Agent, and in turn allows
performance (TEEP), or total cost of ownership (TCO) the application to simply consume XML from the
analysis by factory managers and analysts. MTConnect Agent. Figure 2 shows a basic MTConnect
In this paper, Messenger and its underlying MTConnect architecture.
technology will be described. Section 2 gives a brief Using the MTConnect protocol and the basic
introduction of MTConnect; Section 3 describes the system architecture shown in Fig 2, DMG MORI SEIKI designed
requirements and design; Section 4 discusses application and implemented a remote monitoring system. This
examples; and Section 5 concludes the paper. monitoring system includes live monitoring of MTConnect
enabled machine tools and production related reports.
2. MTConnect Introduction
3. Design of the monitoring system
MTConnect is an open, loyalty free industry
communication protocol that intends to connect 3.1 System requirements
manufacturing equipment together. The idea of having a
common language – a standard protocol – is similar to the To develop a remote monitoring system which meets
standards that the worldwide computer industry adopted to most customer needs, it is critical to determine which
allow computer peripherals and other devices that include requirements are most important to the customer. Based on
mouse devices, keyboards, PDAs, gamepads and joysticks, customer requests, the following notable requirements from
scanners, and digital cameras to be connected to a computer the Mori Net system were adopted by the Messenger
through a common port [5]. system: [4].
MTConnect offered a solution to simplify the application
development and read data from any device that complies Machine monitoring shall be accessible to the
with the standard. The MTConnect specification provides manufacturer from any location worldwide that
an open and extensible channel of communication for provides access to the Internet
interconnectivity between devices, equipment, and systems.
Access to the machine monitoring system shall be
This common communication is facilitated by XML and
secure, in order to defend against malicious attacks
HTTP technology. MTConnect empowers software
over the Internet
developers to implement applications aimed at providing
more efficient operations, improved production The reports presented by the monitoring service
optimization, and increased productivity. shall provide enough information to determine the
The central component of MTConnect is the MTConnect operating status of the machine
Agent. This component connects to devices, and collects
The collected data shall be available to customers
machine data. It then provides this data to a client as a
so that they can make use of it in their production
standardized XML file via HTTP. Another essential
management system
component is the MTConnect Adapter. MTConnect
Adapters allow machines containing different controller
types to
94 Ben Edrington et al. / Procedia CIRP 22 (2014) 92 – 97
The monitoring system shall allow report data to
be exported into standard file formats (such as
CSV and PDF)
In addition, the following new requirements were
adopted for the design of the Messenger system.
The system shall be able to collect data from any
device that is MTConnect compatible
The system shall provide access to monitoring data
via a web browser, and not require the use of a
proprietary desktop application
The system shall be functional on mobile devices,
such as tablets and smartphones
The system shall be able to provide varying levels
of access depending on a user’s access level. For
example, mangers should be able to monitor all
machines under their management, but a machine
operator shall only have access the machines they
have been assigned
The system shall be able to schedule users to
receive notification when a machine event occurs
The system shall be able to detect and notify users
when a machine failure occurs
MTConnect Agent is also notable because its data output to
The system shall be tolerant to network failure, the Data Collector is always provided in the same format,
and recover data when network interruptions occur regardless of the brand or origin of the machine tool
The system shall be distributable and scalable producing the data.
The system shall function on either a LAN or Fig. 3 System Architecture
cloud server, per customer’s IT policy
This eliminates the need to make changes to any algorithm
3.2 System architecture and design implemented beyond the MTConnect Agent. When new
machine tool functionality is implemented, the only
Based on the requirements provided in section 3.1, the software component that needs to be updated is the
system architecture shown in Fig 3 was adopted. This MTConnect Adapter.
system is comprised of several components spread out Finally, the Messenger web server provides user access
among two networked PCs: the machine tool itself, and the to machine status reports through a web browser, thus
Messenger server. eliminating the need for proprietary desktop software.
The MAPPS HMI is responsible for communicating with
the machine controller, and passing state information from 3.3 Machine status reports
the controller to the MTConnect Adapter. The MTConnect
Adapter then transmits this data to the MTConnect Agent Messenger provides nine detailed analysis reports which
running on the Messenger server. At this point, the describe the past and present state of the machine. The data
MTConnect Agent processes the machine state data, and provided in each report can be exported to a spreadsheet or
presents it in a standard XML format based on the to PDF. These nine monitoring and report functions are:
MTConnect Standard. From here, the data collector reads Live status report, History report, Work counter report,
data from the MTConnect Agent, and populates the Manufacturing triangular report, Override report, Alarm
Messenger database. This data is then queried to generate report, Cycle time report, Machining results report, and
reports for the Messenger web server, and to send e-mail Notification scheduler.
and SMS notifications to machine operators and managers.
The most notable components of this system are the 3.3.1 Live status report
MTConnect Adapter and the MTConnect Agent. By
default, the MTConnect Adapter samples the machine state The Live View displays the current state of the machine
once every 1 second; however this resolution can be in text form, as well as the tower light status and an
increased to as much as once every 100 milliseconds. The operation history bar, which shows the operation status of
Ben Edrington et al. / Procedia CIRP 22 (2014) 92 – 97 95
the 24 hour day. Fig 4 shows some of the data available on
the Live View.
program number. Fig 7 shows the Override report, filtered
by program number.
Fig. 4 Live View
Fig. 5 History Report
3.3.2 History report
The History report provides a record of each change in
the controller mode. This includes machine starts, stops,
alarm states, and mode changes between Automatic, MDI,
Manual, etc. Fig 5 shows an example of the History Report
chart and data grid.
3.3.3 Work counter report 3.3.6 Alarm report
When M02/M30 is executed, or a custom M Code
trigger, the work counter will increment and the data
collector will store this in the database. The Work Counter
report displays the controller work counter data.
3.3.4 Manufacturing triangular report
The Manufacturing Triangular Report displays the
number of parts produced per day, as well as the cumulative
number of parts produced during the entire selected period.
Figure 6 shows an example of this report.
Fig. 6 Manufacturing Triangular Report
Fig. 7 Override Report
The Alarm report provides a graph displaying alarm
3.3.5 Override report frequency. Additionally, a chart is provided containing
time-stamped records for each alarm that include the alarm
The override report graphs the Spindle, Jog, and Rapid number and message, program name, line number (program
override values set during the selected period. This graph sequence number), and tool number in use when the alarm
allows users to see when the machine has been left in a high occurred. Fig 8 shows the Alarm Report chart and data grid.
or low override state. This report is also filterable by
3.3.7 Cycle time report
96 Ben Edrington et al. / Procedia CIRP 22 (2014) 92 – 97
that they receive notifications during their work shift. In
addition to this, the administrator can choose which events
will trigger notification, and which will be ignored.
Fig. 9 Notification Scheduler
The Cycle Time report captures the Program Name, 4. Application Examples
Program Start Time, Program End Time, Cycle Time, Idle
Time, and Work Counter incremented value for each Messenger has been developed to be installed either on a
program run. single PC, or as a distributed system. In the distributed
Fig. 8 Alarm Report system case, the MTConnect Agent and Web Server can be
decoupled, allowing Agents in multiple locations to
Each time the machine stops, a record is inserted into communicate with the Data Collector, which resides on the
this grid. A work count value of zero indicates that the
machine stopped running prior to program completion. This
report may show multiple records for each program
execution in the event that the machine stops during
execution. This report may be sorted and filtered.
3.3.8 Machining results report
The Machining Results Report captures the Program
Name, Program Start Time, Program End Time, total
elapsed run time, Parts per program run, and Total Work
Count. This report inserts a record each time a program
completes and the work counter increments. Each program
execution displays the total execution time elapsed,
including stops and idle time.
3.3.9 Notification scheduler Web Server. Fig. 10 shows a distributed configuration.
The website administration section provides a Notification
Scheduler which allows a Messenger administrator to Fig. 10 Distributed configurations
configure machine notifications schedules. The
administrator can assign machines to machine operators so
Ben Edrington et al. / Procedia CIRP 22 (2014) 92 – 97 97
Fig. 12 Alarm Chart by Timestamp
Fig. 11 Alarm Chart Data by Occurrence
In this example, two beta-testing customers – one on the
East coast and one on the West coast – are monitored with
one system. By placing an MTConnect Agent PC on their
Fig. 13 Cycle Time Chart
shop floors and providing each Agent with a global static IP
address for the Data Collector at the DMG MORI SEIKI
monitoring a variety of machining equipment, developed by
site, each shop can be monitored remotely through the
different vendors. The paper explained how DMG MORI
Internet. With the addition of a global static IP address for
SEIKI implemented the MTConnect Standard within its
the Web Server, the website can be accessed from outside
MAPPS HMI, and used the standardized XML output of the
of the local network; enabling the users to monitor their
MTConnect Agent to build a monitoring system that could
machines from anywhere Internet access is available.
collect data from any MTConnect compatible machine.
For companies that have multiple sites networked, a
Some customers have started to use this system to monitor
similar configuration is possible, but without the need for
machines other than DMG MORI SEIKI’s. In the future, as
global static IP addresses for each Agent. A single
more and more data collected and be saved into database by
distributed system can be used to monitor machines at
Messenger, big data technology will be used to develop
multiple sites through the company network.
better analysis and reporting tools to help shop managers
To illustrate the utility of the data and how it can
track and improve energy usage, improve their
improve OEE, we can look at the Notification Scheduler
manufacturing processes, and suggest maintenance
and Alarm table. It is common that the most frequent alarms
practices that will extend the lifetime of their machines.
recorded are the “Tool Life Ending” and “Tool Broken”
alarms. Using the Alarm Table shown in Fig 11 and Fig 12,
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5. Conclusion
This paper described a web based remote machine
monitoring system designed to overcome the challenge of
