In most tobacco factories the secondary machine communication landscape is highly fragmented, both for machine-to-machine and machine-to-higher systems data streams. The fragmentation is evident on many levels: physical media, protocols, data formats, sometimes proprietary, have added up over time with the machines. Unnecessarily high integration efforts result. Moreover, extracting manufacturing insights from the machine data is a valuable opportunity that is severely limited by the fragmentation.
The Tobacco Machine Communication Working Group was formed to help machine manufacturers design their machines to meet the harmonised requirements of its clients, both in terms of machine-to-machine communication and in terms of machine-to-manufacturing system communication.
Currently the TMC Working Group consists of the following members:
- British American Tobacco
- Imperial Tobacco Group
- JT International
- Philip Morris International
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