umati has new partner Selfbits GmbH

Self­bits GmbH is now part of the umati community 

What expect­a­tions do you have of umati, what do you expect from the partnership? 

“The motiv­a­tion of our involve­ment in the umati com­munity is man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pan­ies. With Self­bits Man­u­fac­tur­ing Suite, we enable our cus­tom­ers to gain trans­par­ency over their pro­duc­tion and thus optim­ize it. Machine data, which we extract in real time from the shop floor, plays a decis­ive role in this.  

At present, how­ever, we find an inhomo­gen­eity of inter­faces there. This rep­res­ents a major integ­ra­tion chal­lenge for us. We recog­nize that only stand­ard­iz­a­tion and one pre­ferred stand­ard can put a stop to this. OPC UA and the extens­ive activ­it­ies in this field rep­res­ent the most prom­ising solu­tion. There­fore, we hope to con­trib­ute togeth­er with the com­munity to con­sol­id­ate and spread this stand­ard.” 

What bene­fits does umati offer their com­pany and their customers? 

“In our exchange with man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pan­ies, we recog­nize, regard­less of the industry, that small and medi­um-sized com­pan­ies in par­tic­u­lar are facing major chal­lenges when it comes to digit­iz­a­tion. We accom­pany them in this pro­cess. With our cus­tom­ized IoT plat­form, we can do much more than just lay the found­a­tions for Industry 4.0. Scen­ari­os such as a paper­less fact­ory, intel­li­gent mater­i­al man­age­ment includ­ing smart track & trace mech­an­isms, and near-real-time pro­duc­tion plan­ning are often the begin­ning of the digit­al trans­form­a­tion for our cus­tom­ers.  

A stand­ard­ized inter­face helps us to integ­rate our solu­tion much faster, accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of our plat­form and cre­ate com­par­ab­il­ity between pro­duc­tion sites. We also want to enable and sup­port our cus­tom­ers to imple­ment fur­ther digit­al­iz­a­tion use cases, such as Plug & Pro­duce, based on the stand­ard­ized inter­face.” 

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

“In our solu­tion, we don’t just pro­cess data from indi­vidu­al machines, but from hol­ist­ic pro­duc­tion lines. This includes machines of dif­fer­ent types. The start of the ini­ti­at­ive from the machine tool sec­tor has shown that it is pos­sible to demon­strate inter­op­er­ab­il­ity as an industry. With the expan­sion, it is now a mat­ter of demon­strat­ing this for the entire pro­duc­tion. Of course, we wel­come this step and hope to be able to integ­rate entire pro­duc­tion sites via stand­ard­ized OPC UA inter­faces in the future.”  

 About Self­bits GmbH

Self­bits GmbH meas­ures the fact­ory heart­beat. It helps medi­um-sized man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pan­ies to bring trans­par­ency to their man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cesses by enabling simple and ongo­ing KPI determ­in­a­tion, such as OEE or adher­ence to sched­ule. To achieve this, Self­bits offers cus­tom­ized MES solu­tions along the entire value chain that col­lect the cur­rent status of products and pro­duc­tion equip­ment. By means of real-time data, product qual­ity can be increased and through­put times in pro­duc­tion can be shortened. The Karls­ruhe-based com­pany has been part of the umati com­munity since June 22, 2022.