Jani Jokinen

Retrofitting a factory automation system to address market needs and societal changes

This paper presents the steps taken to retrofit a real multi robot factory automation testbed to achieve increased flexibility, reconfigurability and awareness of assets including energy-relevant, safety-relevant and quality-relevant parameters. Most changes made can be replicated on similar discrete manufacturing settings, as the leveraging technology is Web Services deploying Service Oriented Architecture. The newly introduced technologies and devices can greatly help to address both needs imposed by the market (e.g. fast product customization) and by the society (e.g. the energy savings desired in the manufacturing domain by 2020).

Agent-based control of rapidly reconfigurable material handling system

Rapidly reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RRMS) are acknowledged to serve the needs of the manufacturing companies for handling the shortening product life cycles and mass customization. Reconfigurability aspects are important for achieving short configuration times and adjustable production volumes in automation systems. This paper discusses on material handling system (MHS) where the rapid reconfigurability has taken into main objectives of the developed system. The developed MHS is built on full-functional modules that are represented by intelligent physical agents and uses ABAS architectural definitions. The developed MHS presents solution where software and hardware reconfigurability aspects have been addressed.

Condition monitoring for distributed systems with reconfigurable user interfaces and data permissions

Building complex industrial systems from smaller systems provides flexibility and reconfigurability to the production environment. The reconfigurability of the machines in highly digitalized industrial environments causes however also challenges for the condition monitoring as the emergent behaviour of the system-of-systems can be unknown. System-of-systems approach brings reconfigurability for the production systems, but also increases the configuration need for the monitoring system for instance access right for different information and visualization methods for different user groups such as maintenance personnel, operators and managers. This paper presents an Arrowhead framework compliant solution for system-of-systems condition monitoring where several users require customized views and may have different access rights for the monitored information. The objective is to provide reconfigurable user interfaces for multiple users which can evolve during the operation life of the systems.

An open energy consumption-relevant factory automation dataset in the cloud

In order to fully exploit the potential of optimization algorithms for energy savings in factory automation settings, it is needed to bring together engineers that have knowledge of signal processing algorithms with shop floor engineers that are experienced with real manufacturing processes and factory automation settings. This paper presents an open database storing energy-relevant data from a multi-robot flexible factory automation system. The database is currently populated with data regarding equipment CAMX state events, process/cell/device energy consumption and quality. The database is accessible via a URL and will be further populated with data related to production performance, machine failures and temporary stops etc. The intention is to provide algorithm developers with the needed datasets for design of optimization algorithms for energy efficient manufacturing settings.

Integrating smart city services using Arrowhead framework

The concept of a smart city has been identified as important aspect for responding to the challenges of urbanization and convenience for citizens. The information communication technologies such as cloud computing, internet of things and Service-Oriented Architectures can be deployed as a vehicle for catalysing smart city innovations. Information and sensing technology utilisation and integration of the urban infrastructures and citizens in new means paves the way to important aspect such as energy efficiency, the enhanced quality of life and better systems-of-systems collaboration. Arrowhead project develops a technical framework, which enables the collaborative automation by networked embedded devices. Collaborative automation is enabled with Service-Oriented Architecture. This paper discusses the Arrowhead framework applied in the smart city domain. We present two Arrowhead compliant smart city systems and their integration for creating new and enhanced system behaviour. The paper discusses integration of street light and car heating systems in order to create better user comfort and energy savings. The work demonstrates that the Arrowhead Framework allows to create multi-vendor system of systems applicable in the smart city domain.

Safety monitoring system for a manufacturing workstation using Web Service Technologies

Safety is a major concern in the manufacturing industry. Most of the currently used monitoring techniques for safety data acquisition are proprietary; hence, it is complex to integrate seamless with the rest of the enterprise network. This paper proposes a monitoring technique which can resolve these issues by monitoring the safety data using the ubiquitous standard Web Service Technologies over IP. Web Service Technologies are selected as the enabler technology particularly because it provides worldwide communication and is easy to communicate data. The research consists on increasing the safety levels and information availability of a traditional automatic workstation by successfully exposing as a Web Service the safety information, while, keeping independent networks for safety and standard areas.

Implementation of nonintrusive monitoring and fault diagnosis in industrial robot system

Monitoring and fault diagnosis systems are vital for industrial robot systems for better awareness of system status and shortening the down time. In many cases, the monitoring systems are not upgraded after the robot first installation, because the modifications could cause undesired disturbance for the production. However, for better monitoring and diagnostics rich information is essential that typically requires additional sensors and modifications to the robot system. This paper proposes a monitoring system that is possible to add-on to existing industrial robot system without any changes into the existing control and safety system. The statuses of all safety guard components are indirectly collected by optical sensors to ensure that safety aspects are maintained. The energy consumptions of the main components are monitored with energy analyser and nonintrusive current transformers. The proposed system also uses wireless technology for simplifying the installation. The main benefits of proposed solution are rapid deployment, easy scalability and enhanced fault diagnosis of the main components of the system.

Industrial monitoring and control approach for dynamic and distributed intelligent systems

Current trend in industrial systems is to make devices more intelligent and distribute the control into smaller components. The intelligent devices produce big amount of data which can be provided to plant personnel for maintaining the proper function and desired production performance. Large systems may contain hundreds of intelligent controllers, therefore, there is a need for a system that can easily integrate the devices together and allow dynamic reconfiguration of the group. This paper describes a configuration approach for late binding the intelligent devices into a group, where each device can be controlled and monitored individually or simultaneously. This can be used for creating higher level control or for simplifying the monitoring in situations where the devices within the group may change. The presented approach is also demonstrated by creating an adaptive human machine interface where the group of devices can be operated. The solution utilizes Arrowhead Framework, Orchestration core service and developed management service.

Condition monitoring for predictive maintenance in the pulp & paper industry: Two implementations

This paper presents two implementations of condition monitoring of significant information in a typical machine utilized in the pulp and paper industry, a circuit oil lubrication system. The two discussed alternatives confront a traditional centralized monitoring approach against a Web Service based approach. Advantages and disadvantages of one choice over the other are considered. Both solutions make possible condition based and predictive maintenance as opposed to cyclic maintenance (the approach utilized before these improvements came into place in the presented industrial setting). The presented developments led to vital financial and time savings.

Safety monitoring system for a manufacturing workstation using 6LoWPAN technologies

After installation, safety systems are usually not upgraded anymore, because producers have no financial incentive to impose modifications on the production line . The traditional approach to installing safety systems is to connect all safety components within a workcell in series. The crucial associated problem is the subsequent identification of the source of a fail state. This paper proposes a safety monitoring system as a way to overcome this problem using the 6LoWPAN wireless technology. The used technology supports the implementation of a sensor network, fully accessible by IPv6, on top of existing solutions without any additional rewiring. Sensor data is processed by the monitoring system and displayed on the operator panel, to provide information concerning the location and type of the safety issue.