Into the digital future

By dig­i­tal­ly net­work­ing pro­duc­tion sys­tems, man­u­fac­tur­ers can sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase their effi­cien­cy and avail­abil­i­ty. With GRIPS.world, pack­ag­ing machine man­u­fac­tur­er Schu­bert will soon be offer­ing its cus­tomers a dig­i­tal plat­form that will sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve ser­vice and sys­tem avail­abil­i­ty. Begin­ning in May 2018, all TLM machines will be ready to con­nect to this dig­i­tal plat­form upon cus­tomer request. In the mid-term, it will open up new oppor­tu­ni­ties for pre­ven­tive main­te­nance and com­mu­ni­ca­tion with cus­tomers. The new GS.Gate gate­way, which pro­vides the high­est lev­el of pro­tec­tion at sen­si­tive inter­faces, ensures opti­mum secu­ri­ty dur­ing data exchange.

Ensuring high system availability

With GRIPS.world, cus­tomers will soon be able to access TLM sys­tem pro­duc­tion data from any­where world­wide. Data sov­er­eign­ty, of course, lies entire­ly with the cus­tomer. If an inter­ven­tion by a ser­vice tech­ni­cian is required, remote main­te­nance can be acti­vat­ed by the cus­tomer. With the data col­lect­ed, pre­dic­tive main­te­nance can be used to iden­ti­fy poten­tial prob­lems at an ear­ly stage, there­by avoid­ing down­time and unplanned ser­vice calls. In the future, the sys­tem will for­ward error mes­sages or pos­si­ble caus­es of an impend­ing fail­ure to the respon­si­ble employ­ee, e.g. via mobile devices. This noti­fi­ca­tion will take place even before the actu­al part wears out, thus avoid­ing a cost­ly fail­ure. The oper­a­tor then receives sug­ges­tions for reme­di­al action from the pro­gram. The objec­tive is to entire­ly avoid unplanned downtime.

Optimising overall system effectiveness

GRIPS.world is an impor­tant com­po­nent of Schu­bert Cus­tomer Ser­vices. With the aim of keep­ing total plant effi­cien­cy at the high­est pos­si­ble lev­el over the entire ser­vice life of the machines, the per­for­mance and devi­a­tions from spec­i­fied tar­get states will be con­tin­u­ous­ly adjust­ed in the future. The cus­tomer will always have an overview of this data via a dash­board and, for exam­ple, receive rec­om­men­da­tions for increas­ing pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty and opti­mis­ing capac­i­ty util­i­sa­tion. With this infor­ma­tion and the results of inte­grat­ed con­di­tion mon­i­tor­ing, cus­tomers can increase their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­pete more successfully.

Secure data transfer

Ensur­ing data secu­ri­ty for its cus­tomers is a top pri­or­i­ty for the com­pa­ny. The basis for net­work­ing the TLM machines is there­fore a secure machine inter­face that col­lects and eval­u­ates oper­at­ing and process data, mak­ing it avail­able for dif­fer­ent sys­tems. For this pur­pose, the sub­sidiary Schu­bert Sys­tem Elek­tron­ik has devel­oped the GS.Gate machine gate­way in coop­er­a­tion with gen­ua GmbH, a com­pa­ny of the “Bun­des­druck­erei” or Fed­er­al Print­ing Office. For secure remote main­te­nance and data trans­mis­sion, the indus­tri­al gate­way is equipped with a fire­wall that secure­ly encrypts the data obtained and for­wards it via the Inter­net to the respec­tive analy­sis sys­tem or to the cloud. To ensure the high­est lev­el of pro­tec­tion between the machine and the exter­nal net­work, the GS.Gate is designed accord­ing to the “Secu­ri­ty by Design” prin­ci­ple. Data pro­cess­ing appli­ca­tions that are direct­ly con­nect­ed to the machine are sep­a­rat­ed from the secu­ri­ty sys­tems. This pro­tects the com­mu­ni­ca­tion and data from access from the exter­nal network.
The GS.Gate is man­u­fac­tur­er-inde­pen­dent and can there­fore be con­nect­ed to dif­fer­ent machines. Through a ‘dock­er’, indi­vid­ual appli­ca­tions can be installed and con­nect­ed via com­mon inter­faces. Impor­tant data for the analy­sis are already fil­tered out from the sta­tus and per­for­mance data. The gate­way is admin­is­trat­ed and main­tained remote­ly through the encrypt­ed con­nec­tion. The sub­sidiary offers cus­tomers ser­vices for the GS.Gate such as main­te­nance, com­plete sys­tem man­age­ment and indi­vid­ual sup­port pack­ages. This allows man­u­fac­tur­ers to focus on their pro­duc­tion and cap­i­talise on the many ben­e­fits of net­worked pro­duc­tion processes.