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Glass Industries

Scope / Goals

Develop OPC UA information models for glass production and processing equipment and a basic description of the flat glass cutting equipment. This will be used for communication between glass producing and processing machines and the higher-level systems/devices as well as M2M in the respective processes, a universal manufacturer-independent interface based on OPC UA is to be created.
Main scope is to transport condition data of glass production and processing equipment, in particular flat glass cutting systems vertically into higher level manufacturing systems (MES; etc.) for information and diagnostic purposes as well horizontally to directly connected machines. The basic description of the glass cutting system is supplemented by selected use cases, e. g. machine identification or condition monitoring applications.

Technical Details

The main ObjectType is GlassMachineType, representing a glass processing machine. It contains general Identification Information, Configuration Rules defining machine settings and capabili-ties, information on Manuals for operation and maintenance, information defining Job Manage-ment like handling of tasks/jobs assigned to the machine as well as information on Operational Data, e.g. working status, uptime, and performance tracking. The next steps focus on simulation of jobs including providing information about expected materials and energy consumption and dealing with jobs added manually by an operator. The simulation should offer the ability to even check and pass back pre-conditions that need to be fulfilled, such as mandatory standing edges or, to mirror the buildup and as such reverse of sub material supply. Additionally, the simulation of jobs shall return the expected cycle times to assist the MES system with more accurate pro-duction schedules.

Pushing the limits of standardization in flat glass processing further, the group established a uniform structure and description for job information details such as shape of glass, pro-cessing and assembly, published as VDMA Standard Sheet 24124. Extending the list of known processing categories for more production areas (like lamination lines, surface processings like printing, etc.) is still ongoing.