Within the MES market this cloud solution, realized in the house of MID-TRONIC, can be seen as initial key project for Industry 4.0. The line started its permanent work with connection to the cloud at the end of February 2015, and practice fulfills what the laboratory tests promised. With the help of this IT environment, which can even today be described as visionary, the current objective is to manufacture up to 1.3 million electronics units per year.
Active traceability and security within the cloud
Due to the high product liability pressure an entire traceability including process interlocking is urgently necessary. The cloud-based IT infrastructure to map the Industry 4.0 application scenarios comes from MES supplier iTAC. The technological basis for the traceability is iTAC.MES.Suite release 8.00. Challenges of Industry 4.0 such as M2M and big data have been the essential factors while developing it. The infrastructure is based on the Java technology platform, which is also suitable for a cross-plant horizontal integration in the context and Industry 4.0 and which furthermore guarantees the highest security.
Among the realization of the cloud infrastructure including security criteria, the bidirectional interfaces to SMT machines from ASM Assembly Systems GmbH & Co. KG have also been focused on. With an Industry 4.0-suitable interface – Siplace OIB (Operations Information Broker) – ASM plays a pioneering role throughout SMT plant constructions.
“Previously, experts doubted that a synchronic plant communication via internet tracks could be possible, but with the support of our company-owned middleware technology this project shows that it is realizable in practice“, Dieter Meuser, CTO of iTAC Software AG, explains. “Furthermore, we have chosen a way as risk free as possible regarding security aspects. The data are in a hybrid cloud in Koblenz (Germany) to which only our company has access. The infrastructure is run by ourselves and only employees of iTAC or MID-TRONIC can access data”, Meuser adds.
With the realization of this cloud project, MID-TRONIC has made an important step to prepare itself for the worldwide supply chain within the Industry 4.0 age. In perspective, absolutely new possibilities and scopes for self-optimizing machines as well as the entire SMT manufacture open up.