Description

Come share your experiences, stories, questions, and what you have learned in a safe, non-commercial environment. We seek to understand the state of the market, understand what companies have done that has or has not worked, documenting questions that MESA and the community can help answer. Overall, the goal is to accelerate each participant’s learning and progress toward Smart Manufacturing. 

Topic: Migrating from Good to Great Data collection in an Industry 4.0 world

By John Oskin, Senior Vice President, SmartSights

Effective data collection is critical for optimizing production lines, yet traditional methods—such as manual recording and PLC-coded data collection—are fraught with inefficiencies and inaccuracies. Manual data entry often misses short downtime events and is subject to operator bias, while PLC-based systems suffer from inconsistencies, high costs, and revalidation challenges.  This session will explore the following concepts:

Advanced data collection goes beyond monitoring bottleneck operations, incorporating machine-level insights across all assets.

A multi-layered approach—integrating real-time signal processing, logic engines, and high-speed data acquisition—enhances fidelity, reduces integration costs, and improves root cause analysis.

Additionally, a Fault Learning approach dynamically identifies and ranks faults, leading to better diagnostics and predictive maintenance.

By leveraging digital twins, synchronizing multiple data streams, and enabling fast data validation, companies can significantly improve operational efficiency.

A robust data collection strategy supports MES, OEE, and AI/ML applications, ensuring accurate modeling, predictive analytics, and enterprise-wide standardization.

The future of data collection lies in automation, modular modeling, and intelligent data processing—providing a foundation for digital transformation and sustainable manufacturing excellence.

Questions:

• How do you collect data today, and what's working well and not so well for you?
• Is your data collection focused only at bottlenecks? How do you detect the next bottleneck? Or analyze root causes?
• Think about your data validation process; is it manual and slow? Or what have you done to improve it
• Can you identify your data collection logic layers? Are they connected as you'd most like?
• Do you rely on line-level data collection through MES? How do your machine and line level data collection processes mesh?

Agenda: 

• Thanks to our Sponsor(s) 
• Facilitator introduction 
• Community & Group overview – why participate and what to expect 
• Smart Manufacturing Paradigm 
• Thanks to our Sponsor(s) 
• Summary of last meeting 
• Today's subject 
• Wrap up 
• Next meeting 
• How to keep the conversation going 
• Thanks

The Community meets every two weeks via virtual facilitated meetings. The Community is a benefit of MESA membership. Members automatically receive the Zoom link/invitation. Not a member? Join today! 

Learn more about MESA's Smart Manufacturing Community Groups: