The base of these solutions is the solid recording of relevant data. Due to the availability of all control and sensor data, the service department always has comprehensive information on the operating and maintenance status of the plant. On site, the plant manager has an overview of all important key figures on machine capacity, downtimes and the quality produced – and can also compare the key figures with planned figures and historical data.

The operating and maintenance staff can plan the maintenance according to wear and tear and carry out the repairs in maintenance windows planned in advance. The risk of a sudden downtime with loss of production and all consequences is reduced to a minimum. If required, the manufacturer’s service can be activated directly from the customer application. The service is connected to the right machine via mouse click and can intervene directly – without telephone calls or other time-consuming coordination activities.

The data recording on the plant side is carried out via the mbNet.rokey industrial router with a two-stage security concept. The operating staff decide on site via a key switch whether only data recording is possible – or also remote maintenance and routing. With the mbEDGE extension, the routers become the IoT gateway. Various interfaces such as Modbus-TCP, S7-over-TCP, OPC-UA and various serial protocols ensure that the data of the machine components can be continuously recorded. Modern tools such as Node-RED, MQTT and the connection to different cloud solutions such as Azure, AWS or IBM Watson enable the user to have flexible solutions that are also open for future developments.