Monitoring and Managing Lights-Out Automation for Cobots
As manufacturers turn to advanced automation and robotics to address labor shortages and increased demand, implementing and monitoring these technologies effectively has become more urgent.
There are several benefits to effectively implementing robotics for unattended and operator-assisted automation, challenges impede manufacturers’ ability to get the most out of their robotics. It’s been really hard to monitor and manage your robots using traditional methods. Typical first-gen production monitoring software does not extend beyond the CNC machine, leaving a blind spot for monitoring robot performance. They require operators to enter reason codes for machine downtime, which is useless when running unattended operations, especially with robots.
Manufacturers must understand factory operations at a granular level to know where to focus their efforts when automating. Datanomix Production Monitoring delivers a more thorough understanding of your CNC operations, providing details on machine utilization and offering insights into overall factory trends as data is collected over time. With more data, factory management has the information to see which jobs would most benefit from automation and lights-out operation, providing a roadmap to implementing more automation and robotics.
Datanomix delivers advantages for manufacturers using cobots in three critical areas:
Automated Production Intelligence™
Understanding the performance of your robotic production cells in real-time is a game-changer. Datanomix provides next-generation production monitoring, showing the performance of every job on every connected CNC machine as parts are being made. Operators and supervisors can now see how each robotic-machined cell performs, allowing them to react to issues that affect deliverability as they happen. In addition, Datanomix saves all of the performance data, analyzing it to uncover overall factory trends that help with job costing, hiring, personnel decisions, and capital expenditures. CNC shops can understand how their work cells perform and their available capacity for new jobs and equipment.
Program Management & DNC
Managing the programs that run on CNC machines and robots as they produce parts can be a hassle and inefficient because a lot of the management and transferring of program files happens manually, either with a USB stick, floppy disk, or CD. This means program changes are often not updated across all of the machines, which can result in inconsistent machining and increased waste. Datanomix eliminates these issues with its G-Code Cloud Platform.
Unattended Operations
Unattended operations can be a lifeline for precision manufacturers struggling to meet demand. Most precision manufacturers don’t have the advanced analytics capabilities in-house to fully understand their CNC machine operations in real time, let alone analyze the performance of their automated robotic operations. Datanomix offers real-time performance metrics for unattended robotic work cells, even during lights-out operations.
A Complete Intelligence Framework Around The Machine
Datanomix is developing a world-class partner ecosystem to deliver value-added insights and services to manufacturers. When operational data is consolidated and analyzed holistically, a better picture of overall factory performance emerges, allowing precision manufacturers to make smarter decisions.
