With advanced communication technology, what sorts of additional information are stacklights able to provide that can be of use to operators and floor managers?
John Curtin, director, automation solutions, Motion Industries: Advantages in wireless communication have greatly enhanced the potential for stacklights to become far more helpful to operators and production managers. Traditionally, stacklights have been stand-alone indicators for a few specific functions of a single process. Now, stacklights are able to be networked. This allows the production manager to identify and document faults and unproductive time throughout the plant. In addition to pinpointing the location of a fault, reducing response time and downtime, this information can also reveal opportunities to improve processes and plant productivity.
Trey Gantt, product manager, Eaton: Connected devices can provide immediate indication of a fault and the data to diagnose and even prevent downtime from occurring. Connected technologies can impact productivity by improving efficiencies, saving time and costs.
Tom Rosenberg, vice president of marketing and engineering, Balluff: It’s a new world for real-time, point-of-use information. Stacklights and indicators can provide much more feedback to operators and plant floor managers than ever before. One popular form of information is continuously variable information also referred to as analog information. This information can be used to indicate current level status in tanks, hoppers, feeders, flow racks and so on. Operational status such as flow rates, pressure values and process speed are also popular. Another use for continuously variable information is pacing for operators in manual assembly areas. They can quickly see how much time each individual person has for their process step. If someone is struggling, others can visibly see the situation and step in and help.
The other piece of information that has been popular is simply displaying that the machine is in idle state. This would typically suspend all other forms of indication. We are all familiar with the spinning icon on our computers, and now this is available for machines, as well. Basically, it indicates the machine is not ready. Again, colors can be used as part of a communication plan to indicate the reason for the idle time and call for specific personnel to respond. As soon as the machine is ready, the indicators and stacklights revert back to normal operations, just like your computer.
Peter B. Gasparini, sales manager, Werma-USA: If we are talking about wireless monitoring and free software/SQL, the solution time-and-date-stamps every critical process or condition or status or timely email or texts, which can be analyzed for lean initiatives and continuous improvements. Werma has clients gathering all types of information with stacklights. And the classic low-hanging-fruit data is uptime; downtime/faults, or reasons for stoppage; QC processes using vision sensors; production cycles/counting; transparency of production facility—what’s the current status of my machinery or manual workstations or pumps or chillers; identify more productive capacity; initiate processes, such as start/stop machinery; document time to respond.
Werma clients are very creative and have come up with very interesting applications for our stacklights with communication—wireless—technology.
Carter Williams, product manager, Siemens: Communication capability allows stacklights to send diagnostic information through sensors on the machine to the operator regarding the condition of the machines. This data can be used to schedule maintenance or repairs that could possibly prevent more costly damage to equipment if it went unmonitored.
Todd Mason Darnell, Ph.D., marketing manager of services and safety, Omron Automation Americas: The addition of Bluetooth or other wireless technology to the stacklight can significantly improve its effectiveness. The stacklight, by itself, is a simple visual indicator that provides only basic information about the machine status. With the additional of wireless connectivity, the stacklight can push an error notification to plant personnel enabling a “smart first response” to machine. Even if the control system does not support the push of an error code, supplementing the visual alarms with a notification that goes to the phone or other wireless device improves the response time, especially with larger plants or during times of reduced staffing, such as third shift or holiday production.
In addition to wireless technology, we are seeing stacklights that have auditory alerts to supplement the visual indicators. These are moving beyond the traditional blaring alarms to include different tones, MP3 files with music or voice annunciators that identify the machine and the type of error.
Lyon Lee, product marketing manager, IDEC: Stacklights can show a wide range of information such as alarms, throughput, speed, flow rate, temperature, pressure or tank level.
