umati has new partner ACI Laser GmbH

ACI Laser GmbH is now part of the umati community

What are your expect­a­tions of umati, and what do you hope to gain from the partnership? 

We expect our part­ner­ship with umati to res­ult in simple, stand­ard­ized machine integ­ra­tion of our laser sys­tems and secure OPC UA com­mu­nic­a­tion in our tar­get mar­kets world­wide.  As a part­ner of umati, we want to achieve great­er vis­ib­il­ity as an innov­at­ive laser man­u­fac­turer and integ­rat­or. We want to expand and con­sol­id­ate our pos­i­tion in the mar­ket as a strong integ­ra­tion part­ner for auto­mated laser mater­i­al pro­cessing solu­tions. As a mem­ber of the umati com­munity, we are inter­ested in par­ti­cip­at­ing in know­ledge trans­fer and the con­tinu­ous devel­op­ment of glob­al stand­ards for Industry 4.0 connectivity.

What advant­ages does umati offer your com­pany and your customers? 

Thanks to umati, ACI’s laser sys­tems for mark­ing, engrav­ing, and trim­ming can be seam­lessly, quickly, and securely integ­rated into cus­tom­er IT sys­tems without the need for com­plex spe­cial pro­gram­ming solu­tions. This greatly sim­pli­fies the integ­ra­tion pro­cess, saves resources, and reduces costs. There is a sep­ar­ate com­pan­ion spe­cific­a­tion (OPC 40530) for laser sys­tems, which provides a stand­ard­ized and expand­able inter­face for integ­rat­ing laser sys­tems into an OPC UA envir­on­ment. The spe­cific­a­tion defines, among oth­er things, inform­a­tion on the oper­at­ing status (“running”/“stopped”), errors and warn­ings, data on the next main­ten­ance, recipe para­met­ers, activ­ity logs, status data, and con­sump­tion data. With umati’s stand­ard­ized data mod­els, ACI laser sys­tems can be recog­nized inde­pend­ently of the man­u­fac­turer and auto­mat­ic­ally integ­rated into high­er-level sys­tems (“plug and pro­duce”). Dir­ect integ­ra­tion in real time reduces the engin­eer­ing effort for Industry 4.0 pro­viders. All machines that “speak” UMATI/OPC-UA identi­fy them­selves, deliv­er stand­ard­ized data, and are seam­lessly integ­rated into MES and SCADA sys­tems. Cus­tom­ers bene­fit from the scalab­il­ity of the solu­tion and can sig­ni­fic­antly increase the effi­ciency of their pro­cesses. Errors can be iden­ti­fied more quickly, down­time min­im­ized, and the auto­ma­tion of pro­duc­tion pro­cesses optim­ized. Integ­rated mech­an­isms, such as encryp­tion and access con­trol, also ensure secure com­mu­nic­a­tion between machines and IT systems.

How do you assess the expan­sion of the umati ini­ti­at­ive to the entire mech­an­ic­al engin­eer­ing sector? 

Ger­man industry asso­ci­ations and organ­iz­a­tions, such as the VDMA and VDW, are pro­mot­ing the expan­sion of umati bey­ond the machine tool industry. Umati is to be exten­ded to the entire mech­an­ic­al and plant engin­eer­ing sec­tor in order to pro­mote the use of OPC UA Com­pan­ion Spe­cific­a­tions. We want to par­ti­cip­ate in this togeth­er with our mar­ket com­pet­it­ors. Umati offers both machine man­u­fac­tur­ers and users massive advant­ages through stand­ard­iz­a­tion, inter­op­er­ab­il­ity, and secure, simple data integ­ra­tion. It is a cent­ral build­ing block for Industry 4.0, smart fact­ory con­cepts, and data-driv­en pro­duc­tion. The mech­an­ic­al engin­eer­ing industry world­wide bene­fits from the con­tinu­ous devel­op­ment of the glob­al net­work and its applic­a­tion in all major tech­no­logy areas, such as robot­ics, laser sys­tems, machine tools, and meas­ure­ment tech­no­logy. The advant­ages of umati give its play­ers a broad per­spect­ive and a high level of invest­ment security.

About ACI Laser 

ACI Laser GmbH has been devel­op­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and dis­trib­ut­ing laser pro­cessing machines for mater­i­al mark­ing and laser trim­ming in the indus­tri­al sec­tor for over 25 years. With an extens­ive product port­fo­lio of mark­ing lasers, almost all mater­i­als can be pro­cessed per­man­ently and effi­ciently. Com­pact lasers are used as integ­ra­tion sys­tems, in manu­al work­sta­tions, or as auto­mated spe­cial solu­tions. With more than 5,000 sys­tems installed world­wide, ACI is one of the lead­ing laser man­u­fac­tur­ers. The com­pany is headquartered in Nohra, Ger­many, with branches in Chem­nitz, Lüdenscheid, and Dreie­ich. ACI cur­rently employs 60 people. In addi­tion, ACI main­tains an inter­na­tion­al dis­tri­bu­tion net­work with part­ners in over 30 countries.