Accelerating digitisation process

The article explains how Beckhoff’s TwinCAT analytics tool offers a constant eye on the production processes to achieve maximum performance.

- Pascal Dresselhaus

When it comes to evaluating production in a manufacturing plant, individual analysis of each piece of equipment is not enough. More often than not, the process of calculating characteristic values calls for a bigger picture, which is precisely where TwinCAT Analytics comes in. This tool makes it incredibly easy to adopt a more comprehensive approach, calculate key production figures, and monitor equipment. With the corresponding engineering carried out entirely by the machine builder or system integrator, this opens up a whole new spectrum of data-based business models.

TwinCAT Analytics maps a complete workflow for achieving these all-important goals, ranging from data acquisition and communication, through data storage, sifting, and analysis, to the continuous analysis of machine and plant data via a web-based dashboard.

Workflow openness and simplicity

The software can be used across all sectors of the manufacturing industry and beyond since it is also possible to analyse information such as building data. Even significant differences in sampling rates ranging from microseconds to a few seconds can be combined within a single analysis. In addition to PC-based control technology from Beckhoff, data from thirdparty systems can also be acquired via corresponding gateways, with OPC UA serving as the downward interface.