Cutting-edge automation solution with AI
12/15/2021 by Thomas Am Ende, Lead Marketing | AI
Artificial intelligence is the future of automation technology
The next stage of industrial automation technology and its future path lies in equipping it with artificial intelligence (AI) as standard. This will allow process steps to be digitally linked, monitored, analyzed across the board and improved. In this way, significant increases in efficiency, cost savings, and quality improvements can be realized for manufacturing companies, with only a small investment volume. This is made possible, among other things, by the high performance of cloud computing, standardized interfaces and a large portfolio of retrofit sensor technology.
Our web-based AIoT platform graphicx.io was developed specifically for this purpose. Not only are all available data streams from the machines and systems brought together via the PLC or HMI and visualized in real time, but they are also evaluated fully automatically with AI. The embedded Industrial Health Scoring, for example, compares the real-time values with the learned target behavior from the past and thus detects anomalies at an early stage. This means higher availability, better quality, less scrap, and less downtime.
Achieving the best possible results with retrofit sensor technology
In many production lines, however, so-called blind spots represent a challenge. These are areas and sections of the process that have not yet been measured and monitored by sensors. This results in inaccuracies in monitoring and missed opportunity.
However, these intransparencies can now be eliminated with little effort. In addition to the existing data and data streams of the machines, almost any point in the process can be retrofitted with precisely fitting sensors. Via the communication standard IO-Link, the sensor data flows into specially designed wireless gateways and these in turn talk directly to our AIoT platform graphicx.io in a pre-configured manner and with minimal installation effort. Plug and play.
NEXOCRAFT cooperates with several hardware partners in this area. For example, automation technology can be equipped with sensors from ifm or autosen. The io-key Wireless IoT Gateway is available as a gateway. The selection of possible sensors is enormous. Thankfully, these gateways are compatible with almost 10,000 sensors on the market across manufacturers.

Precise monitoring of an injection molding
For example, a conventional injection molding machine shows that injection speeds and temperature fluctuations of the heating elements can be monitored in the data series from the machine itself. However, other factors that are decisive for the process, such as the granulate moisture or the production hall’s climate values, are not usually included.
If the injection molding machine is now retrofitted with IO-Link sensors, the overall picture of the production process is significantly enhanced. As the quality of the data increases, so does the quality and precision of the predictions made by graphicx.io's AI.

Retrofitted & Modern Machines can connect to the AIoT solution graphicx.io
At the SPS 2021 (exhibition "Smart Production Solutions"), we wanted to showcase the power and flexibility of graphicx io and autosen's IO-Link sensors for the first time. Unfortunately, the fair was cancelled due to the current situation.
Nevertheless, we will be pleased to show you in an online demo the simple way in which you can gather the process data of your machines in the cloud and evaluate them with AI. graphicx io is designed to start quickly. Time-consuming and expensive software customizing is not necessary. And we will show you in the live demo how you can refine the picture of your process, especially with retrofit sensors.
Let's take a look at your use case together. Book your live demo now!
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Author: Thomas Am Ende | Lead Marketing
Thomas Am Ende is marketing lead at NEXOCRAFT. His passion is to unite customer-centric engineering, the business perspective and digitalization. For him, equipping industrial production with AI in a direct and simple way is the big goal behind Industry 4.0.
