Objectives:

• To help establish fully interconnected and digitised smart factories
• Data to be extracted from legacy machining data/throughput
• Data within legacy machines/systems can integrate with external condition monitoring systems into one complete dashboard

Desired Outcomes:

• Key users are management and shop-floor personnel.
• One current method to obtain data from legacy machines is to introduce sensors in a non-invasive way to extract data for visualisation and analysis.
• However, there are still crucial data of these legacy machines or data from their Manufacturing Execution system that are still not retrievable.
• The limitation to the add-on sensors is that they cannot generate data to the needs of business owners fully.

Current Limitations:

• Costly and unjustifiable to replace existing legacy machines/systems (e.g. CNC/laser cutting).
• Lack of standard IoT communication protocols like MQTT and OPC UA.
• External sensors can only fulfil a partial wish list of business owners – mainly on reducing downtime and saving wastage costs.
• Crucial data like cutting speed, machine uptime, and throughput are also needed for OEE.