What's MTConnect?
How to leverage
data on your
shop floor made
(somewhat) easy.
BY RAY CHALMERS, Contributing Editor
Programmable logic
controllers (PLCs)
from Mitsubishi
Electric Automation
are equipped with
MTConnect adapters.
Each and every shop floor is a rich mine of data that can be collected for its
own continued improvement, but as recently as 2010, manufacturing industry
research stated that only about 4 to 5 percent of machine tools worldwide were
connected to a formal data-collection system. The main drawback is efficiently
gathering data from different makes and models of machines and tools with
different controls. This has been likened to bringing a permanently ongoing
United Nations meeting to order with no translators.
The idea for an open standard for making all shop-floor data easily accessible
and workable was conceived in 2006 by the Association For Manufacturing
Technology ( amtonline.org ) with the first version of MTConnect released in
2008. Then, in 2009, the MTConnect Institute ( mtconnect.org ), a not-for-profit
501(c)(6) organization, was established to further the development of the
MTConnect standard and publish related materials.
Many of the major machine tool builders are implementer members of
MTConnect, meaning they supply MTConnect-compliant devices. Software
companies are also in the mix, incorporating models for data gathering and
report generation. And 2017 is starting off with more companies supporting the
concept, such as factory automation provider Mitsubishi Electric Automation
( us.mitsubishielectric.com/fa/en/ ). This means more shop-floor components
and functions are being made ready to contribute data and improve shop effi-
ciencies. But this is still the early-adopter phase, and not all adapters are alike.
THE BASICS
But first, a quick primer. Basically, MTConnect is an open, extensible, royalty-
free standard—a communications protocol designed specifically for
the shop-floor environment. By interfacing with different
machine tools, cutting tools, too presetters or any
piece of equipment or data source, software appli-
cations can be built on MTConnect standard
for the efficient gathering, reporting and
use of a shop's data.
44