A communication module for capturing events in order to monitor a service-based automated production line

Abstract

The efficiency, reliability and on time maintenance of a manufacturing process largely relies on a highly efficient and rapidly responsive monitoring system. The increasing demand of uninterrupted continuation of a production process emphasizes the need of anefficient real time monitoring mechanism of the process. The rapid advancements of modern technology especially in the communication field have largely affected every field of daily life as well as the industrial sector. The rise of wireless communication technology has made it possible to develop wireless sensors for industrial monitoring applications and revolutionize the monitoring techniques to a greater extent. The work researches a web based monitoring approach for real time monitoring of service-oriented production assembly with 3D visualization. The implementation deals with the design and implementation of a communication framework for receiving, processing and publishing events information of a service oriented assembly line. The processed information is then linked and simulated with a 3D replica of the actual process over the web in real time. The work demonstrates the usefulness of versatile features of 3D visualization in industrial monitoring applications. The online accessibility of the monitoring application enables all concerned individuals to access and monitor the manufacturing process in real time from any remote location. The developed web application can also be simulated for a given set of historical data. Currently, the research work focuses on capturing and simulating only two types of shop floor messages (Pallet activity notification message and Robot activity equipment change state message), but can be enhanced to include more features of the robotic assembly line in future.