In conjunction with the awareness that the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will change all production processes and the entire manufacturing industry in the future – especially those of our customers – we developed a scalable, secure solution: the Kurtz POWerBoard, which was presented very successfully for the first time at GIFA 2019. The visitors were enthusiastic and the reactions were without exception positive.
For further development we then put the Kurtz POWerBoard through its paces under real conditions with our long-standing customer and cooperation partner CSA Herzogenburg GmbH. Our customers can now see the added value of this dynamic control tool directly on their plants and, for example, their overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) can be permanently and directly viewed on the basis of defined parameters for quality, performance and availability. With the Kurtz POWerBoard, customers now have the opportunity to carry out a detailed, cross-site comparison within the company via a secure and certified cloud solution. On this basis, measures to increase efficiency can be derived, implemented and then the successes determined.
Location-internal system comparison
For each user of the Kurtz POWerBoard, a comparison of plants within a production line as well as between different locations is possible, so that foundries of any size can get a clear added value from the Kurtz POWerBoard. In addition to OEE comparisons, digitized downtime tracking, for example, can be used to analyze in real time why a plant has a higher availability than a comparable one. Was there possibly a failure of a cooling system? Did the mould have to be reworked or brought back to temperature first? The Kurtz POWerBoard provides meaningful answers to these and many more questions.
The Kurtz POWerBoard was developed as a tool for all levels of organization. The plant operator, for example, does not have to keep cumbersome paper lists for downtime tracking, but intuitively and quickly selects the downtime reason directly in the machine visualization. In management, it offers the possibility of obtaining an overview of the OEE of individual casting lines, for example, at the click of a mouse. And in the event of a service call, the maintenance department can transmit necessary information such as serial number and message history directly to Kurtz Service via the ticket system at the push of a button and receive immediate support.
With the Kurtz POWerBoard Gateway, an industry 4.0-capable OPC UA server is optionally available, which allows the simple and secure integration of any Kurtz plant as well as third-party machines into the customer´s local network. The development of the Kurtz POWerBoard – like the digitization itself – is far from being finished. Further functions are continuously being developed for all plants listed in the Kurtz portfolio.
Expanding optimization potential with Kurtz Quality Management System
Who would not like to be automatically informed when the same or very similar components are produced in different qualities on the same equipment, regardless of the production location? Where is the optimization potential in the production process? All this can be realized by means of Kurtz POWerBoard in combination with the Kurtz Quality Management System. Industry 4.0 – we are right in the middle of it, are you too?
