MTConnect is an open, extensible and royalty-free standard communication protocol that delivers real-time shop or factory floor data from machines to software applications used by businesses. The data procured help to measure and monitor key factors such as machine run times or downtimes, equipment availability or usage, Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), production (reporting/tracking), and maintenance (tracking/planning). MTConnect translates the diverse information from a machine tool into a common internet-based language. The MTConnect standard is the first to define a standard dictionary for manufacturing data, which allows data from multiple machines to have a common definition – name, units, values, and context. This semantic vocabulary approach for the manufacturing equipment data provides structured, contextualized data with no proprietary format. It also defines the communications protocols, the vocabulary and semantics of the information models. Data defined once by the MTConnect standard is used by all the MTConnect compliant software applications. This eliminates the need to redefine the data within each application. Additionally, this flexibility allows floor monitoring and equipment maintenance without worrying about the vendor or proprietary machine protocols.
The main benefit of MTConnect is that it enables data from a varied range of machines to have common values, units, names and context. Other benefits include:
Today automation is the focus of manufacturing industries. Manufacturers seek to bring robotics and other modern equipment to their facilities, which has made it all the more important for factory floor integration. The number one benefit that manufacturers who adopt MTConnect is the quick and easy accessibility to factual data.
Two of the most important fundamentals aspects of the MTConnect standard that facilitate this immediate access to data are the Agent Stack and the Adapter Stack. The MTConnect adapter stack is a piece of hardware or software that records machine data, standardizes it, and transfers it to an MTConnect agent. The MTConnect Agent Stack organizes the machine data in a standard format by following a prescribed XML structure. Irrespective of the type of machine that is being monitored, the agent stack can buffer and forward the data to applications when requested.
MTConnect Agent by Utthunga is a highly optimized stack, built in C. Utthunga also provides a desktop-based MTConnect Client. The Agent and the client can be quickly customized for bespoke applications.
The MTConnect (ANSI/MTC1.4-2018) is a read-only communication standard primarily focussed towards the machine tool industry. It is open, extensible and royalty-free. The standard has three sections which specify machine tool components and data description, provides XML structure for data representation, and organizes the data streams provided by machine tools.
If your machine tool equipment does not support MTConnect, then you must consider purchasing or implementing an MTConnect adapter for your equipment. A reliable third party implementer like Utthunga can help you with this transition.
Shop owners purchasing new equipment can request the OEMs to provide MTConnect compliant equipment or software applications. Legacy equipment can be made MTConnect compliant by implementing a hardware/software MTConnect Adapter. The standard is free and available at www.mtconnect.org/documents.
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