43 COMMUNICATION ISSUE Digital systems promise foundries a bright future to improve productivity, and quality while reducing costs and waste. With a deeper, digital understanding of process challenges, you can quickly visualize the path to the most efficient solutions. A foundry is filled with actionable data from materials testing, machine performance, and casting processes. Yet, at the same time, we see foundries struggle to communicate this data to the right people and use the data to improve performance. The problem lies in the number of data sources, built on multiple systems—one vendor's machine here, another's database there—which creates "silos" of incompatible data. Stitching these disparate data pools together offline to gain a full process view takes a lot of time and effort, and is impossible to make use of in real-time monitoring. The merged data is often inconsistent and error-prone; therefore, the technical staff just sticks to traditional “rule of thumb” methods because they can’t find the data important to them, or they can’t trust it. With monitoring is restricted to single machines and individual operators, supervisors don't know how well a process is performing, right now. Maintenance techs have no idea if a problem is brewing somewhere on the line and faultfinding is ineffective; finding root causes is slow and may never fully succeed. This results in more scrap, longer periods of unplanned downtime and higher overall costs. FOUNDATION BUILDING Think of applying digital systems to your foundry as a 4-step cycle. You collect, visualize and analyze data, and then intervene in the process to improve it, applying what you’ve learned. Then you can go back to the data to check how well the changes are working. Starting out with a limited digital project, perhaps covering only molding and pouring, is often the best approach. Even the simplest data can reveal a host of issues, such as process bottlenecks that waste production time or excess energy consumption. You can test, learn, and benefit, and then progress at your own speed towards more sophisticated applications. Before starting, think ahead to put the right foundations in place to support your future ambitions. Do you want to end up with a live view of your entire process? And, after that, perhaps you'd like to consider AI-driven process optimization? At the outset, choose a single, flexible IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) solution that can connect one or two machines or a whole line – and scale to multiple lines across many global facilities if required. Ensuring that your system is scalable will make it much easier to start out small and grow it as your processes expand. ONE SYSTEM ONLY A single digital solution typically includes IIoT gateways (machine interfaces) for data collection, sensors to generate the desired data, a central database to store it and software tools for reporting, visualization, and analysis. All elements should be instantly compatible – “plug and play” – and only require configuration. Along with a facility-wide computer network, this will enable phased, step-by-step deployments without creating incompatible data silos. To avoid manual data integration, Communicate Foundry Information—Turn Data Into Value NINA DYBDAL RASMUSSEN Head of Monitizer Norican Group ARTICLE TAKEAWAYS: • How to build a digital infrastructure in stages • Customize a digital system to your foundry’s specification Continued on next page
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