Siemens’ Nuremberg press shop manufactures drives for mining and shipping, among other products. The press shop has a total of nine different Schuler presses that are equipped with Industrial Edge and other digital tools from Schuler’s Digital Suite—effectively creating their own Press Shop of the Future, or smart factory.
The Industrial Edge solution, jointly developed by Schuler and Siemens, is compact in a box. The Industrial Edge systems are integrated and fully assembled at Schuler. All system hardware is pre-assembled in a control box with a SIMATIC industrial PC and relevant interfaces. This control box is then installed and connected by Siemens.
Schuler uploads applications to the Edge Device from its Göppingen headquarters, for which the applications are consistently updated via the central Industrial Edge Management System. The Edge Device provides machine data collected from the installed applications to the internal Siemens network. Siemens then has the ability to analyze the data and optimize production.
"WE TRUSTED that, with our combined expertise, we could collect all the essential nuggets of data to transform our press shop. we pioneered this project together, and both schuler and siemens have seen tremendous benefits as a result."
All machines in the Siemens press shop have been converted, and the machine data has already provided valuable insights to the team. Tobias Grüner, Head of Digitalization and Infrastructure at Siemens Large Drives Applications, is responsible for one of the central press shops that produce large drives. A concerning issue for him, and his team, is the wear-and-tear on both the machines and dies. “This wear-and-tear is actually noticeable to the machine operators. The sound of a press changes when the die becomes blunt,” explains Grüner. “We can now measure the press force and determine how well our processes are running via the data analysis collected from Industrial Edge.”
Industrial Edge applications, running on a SIMATIC IPC227E, capture data from the press and transmit the results to the Schuler Cloud and Siemens network. The compact solution can be easily integrated into existing press systems and is now a standard for most Schuler presses. The Industrial Edge Hub and Management System enable custom applications to also be centrally deployed and managed on the shop floor with just a few simple clicks. The data is always protected from unauthorized access.
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