So you have a million square feet of factory floor and you spent
(or plan too) the capital to collect data from every piece of equipment, low
hanging fruit has been picked yet there is still something missing. How about the factory floor workers? Are you
able to address their needs as easily as your automation or do you have vast
black holes of lost communication? Areas where people go in not to be heard
from for hours only to report they are out of supplies.
If you installed a flexible and scalable OEE, MES, ERP or
any other system of the like it is an easy fix. In any case let me outline some
very affordable options to shine a light on those blind spots and increase
production.
The solution? Ready? …. Install
remote kiosks to form a building wide Andon system. This will give you the
ability to log requests, response times, track supply shortages, receive
feedback AND display it all real-time on
the factory floor or supervisory location. Outfitting everyone with tablets
is the wave of the future but due to loss and damage I am going to focus on
fixed location kiosks.
Before we get into the software piece let’s look at the
hardware. The cost of hardware has dropped dramatically as everyone has
expected for years. In fact as you will see there are remote terminal/kiosk
options for every budget. For the sake of discussion and planning I will use Ignition as the industrial software because
it is light enough to run on any of these computers. I also prefer the Linux OS
for remote kiosks as it requires less babysitting in the form of updates. Starting from the low end let’s look at the
new Raspberry PI 2. The Raspberry PI 2
might not be ready for the big time but is worth mentioning.
- A 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU (~6x performance)
- 1GB LPDDR2 SDRAM (2x memory)
Base price is $35, then adding a case, wireless and a larger
SD card you are at around $75. Plenty of
keyboard mouse options for ~$30 and a $100 20” monitor puts us at $205 per station.
Honestly, chances are you can find some abandon 16” monitors in the IT
boneyard for free but we will keep $100 as the monitor price point.
Next we will look at the ComputeStick form Intel, $110 and nicely equipped. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth standard.
- Quad-core Intel Atom processor, 1.33 GHz
- Pre-installed with Linux and 1GB memory
- 8 GB of onboard storage
- Micro SD card slot for easy access to additional files
- Built-in Wi-Fi & Bluetooth
Intel Compute Stick $110, Monitor $100, BluetoothKeyboard and Mouse $30, will bring us to $240 per station. I should mention
Google has a Chromebit due out this summer that you may find attractive as
well.
Okay, you get it, lot of options, so moving on to display
all this information on the floor. Starting with the Cadillac of Industrial
Displays here is the Arista65” available with or without an onboard Industrial PC. Also available in a
touch screen. If that is too much monitor for you HopeIndustrial Systems has a very affordable 23” Monitor for $1080.
For the software piece as I mentioned Ignition from
Inductive Automation has the flexibility to create and deploy unlimited remote
clients with custom menu’s based on location or login. Meaning the receive area
could have a button for “Overage” and the shipping area could have a button to
indicate “Tape Low”. Log, track and display data for materials, processes or
employees all in one place. A totally integrated system with reporting and
historical data without breaking the bank.
So to sum up the numbers I will include 5 kiosks and 2
displays.
Pi 2 $205
X 5 = $1025
-Compute Stick $240 X 5 = $1200
Arista 42” ~$5950 X 1 = $5950
-Hope 23” $1080 X 2 = $2160
-Ignition $12512 X 1 =$12512
Programming TBD
-TOTAL using Compute Stick, Arista and Ignition: $15,872
Depending on your current situation and future needs an
affordable building Andon package is well within reach. Good luck and stay
focused.
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