Joint innovative solution at SPS 2021

Keep­ing a pre­cise overview of the ener­gy con­sump­tion and main­te­nance sta­tus of their machin­ery, detect­ing loss­es at an ear­ly stage and tak­ing appro­pri­ate mea­sures to achieve sav­ings or avoid peak loads — man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies face pre­cise­ly this chal­lenge. SMC, the spe­cial­ist for pneu­mat­ic and elec­tric automa­tion, and elu­nic, a strat­e­gy con­sul­tant and soft­ware inte­gra­tor for Indus­try 4.0 appli­ca­tions, will be show­ing a joint­ly devel­oped solu­tion for this at this year’s SPS 2021 trade fair.

Ener­gy loss­es in pneu­mat­ic sys­tems are not only a cost fac­tor, but against the back­drop of cli­mate change, an issue that requires urgent action — not least in the wake of the EU’s Green Deal: Thus, by 2050, no more net green­house gas­es are to be released, mak­ing Europe the first cli­mate-neu­tral con­ti­nent. In order to sup­port com­pa­nies in opti­miz­ing their pro­duc­tion and thus sav­ing ener­gy and CO2, SMC Deutsch­land GmbH and elu­nic AG have inten­si­fied their coop­er­a­tion in the field of main­te­nance and repair man­age­ment. The two part­ners will present a mar­ket-ready solu­tion at the SMC booth 365 in Hall 3 and at the elu­nic booth 335, Hall 6 at the smart pro­duc­tion solu­tions (SPS) trade fair in Nurem­berg from Novem­ber 23 to 25, 2021.

The new solu­tion extends the “EnergyTransparency@SMC” ser­vice with the func­tion of the shopfloor.io main­te­nance man­ag­er from elu­nic. This pro­vides users with holis­tic mon­i­tor­ing of the ener­gy data of their pneu­mat­ic sys­tems as well as doc­u­men­ta­tion and dis­play of all nec­es­sary main­te­nance steps. For pre­cise mea­sure­ment of pres­sure and flow val­ues, SMC pro­vides “EnergieTransparenz@SMC”, a com­pact mod­ule designed accord­ing to the plug-and-use prin­ci­ple, which sends the mea­sured val­ues to an IoT plat­form from SMC every minute. The shopfloor.io main­te­nance man­ag­er from elu­nic is inte­grat­ed direct­ly into this to obtain the ener­gy data and thus cre­ate and oper­ate main­te­nance plans and tasks indi­vid­u­al­ly for each machine or indi­vid­ual mea­sur­ing points. Thanks to the com­pre­hen­sive doc­u­men­ta­tion, the sys­tem makes it pos­si­ble to track changes to machines even months to years lat­er. Tech­ni­cal man­agers thus not only gain a pre­cise overview of when and how defects were rec­ti­fied in the past, but also the abil­i­ty to extend the ser­vice life of machines through pin­point maintenance.

The new solution offers users a wide range of benefits:

-Seam­less documentation
‑Oper­a­tion inde­pen­dent of end devices
‑Com­plete process in one hand — from record­ing to documentation
‑Facil­i­ta­tion of the work­flow with­in maintenance
‑All nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion direct­ly at hand and time sav­ings when searching
‑Live overview of all main­te­nance cycles at any time

“In the envi­ron­ment of dig­i­tal­iza­tion and Indus­try 4.0, part­ner­ships are indis­pens­able to bun­dle exper­tise in the best pos­si­ble sense. Our home is direct­ly at the machine as well as the plant, and here our com­po­nents such as sen­sors and actu­a­tors play a deci­sive role. After all, this is where the data that needs to be for­ward­ed orig­i­nates. In addi­tion, net­work­ing of the indi­vid­ual data points is also very impor­tant, both of which we achieve through our “EnergyTransparency@SMC” ser­vice. Through the part­ner­ship with elu­nic, we are demon­strat­ing very con­crete­ly not only the tech­ni­cal fea­si­bil­i­ty for inno­v­a­tive solu­tions, but also how they can be turned into real added val­ue for customers.”

- Chris­t­ian Ziegler, Head of Dig­i­tal Busi­ness Development

“Through our many years of expe­ri­ence in Indus­tri­al IoT for machine man­u­fac­tur­ers, we have already gained valu­able insights into mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing and know the chal­lenges faced by users there. Through the part­ner­ship, we gain even bet­ter access and receive an opti­mal inter­face for our shopfloor.io main­te­nance man­ag­er to the impor­tant ener­gy data via their IoT plat­form,” explains Clau­dio Gus­mi­ni, Direc­tor IoT Solu­tions, elu­nic AG. “Both machine builders and oper­a­tors ben­e­fit from the over­all solu­tion. This makes it clear what added val­ue is cre­at­ed by bundling com­pe­ten­cies — a core idea of Indus­trie 4.0. The basis for this is not only open­ness when it comes to data, but also between part­ners, and this is pre­cise­ly what is ful­filled in the cooperation.”