Kaizen is a part of Lean Manufacturing that focuses on the concept of continuous improvement to reduce waste. For implementing Kaizen on the factory floor, comprehensive and efficient tools for data acquisition, process measurement and analysis are required. The MTConnect open specification provides for cost-effective data acquisition on the manufacturing floor for machine tools and related devices. This paper will look at a Kaizen implementation on the shop floor level for continuous improvement using real-time MTConnect data. The Kaizen transformation of machine data into production knowledge was performed in order to understand energy consumption, asset operation and process performance. The paper takes a detailed examination of the machine tool energy management.

Recently, MTConnect has been developed as an open and free communications standard to facilitate the exchange of data on the manufacturing floor for machine tools and related devices. This paper will briefly describe MTC, and look at quality of service issues investigated by implementing a modest MTConnect testbed in a “Dual-Ethernet” machine tool network configuration. MTConnect is expected to address the continuing pressure to reduce costs and improve time to market places in the CNC manufacturing world. It can facilitate smarter ways of manufacturing and intensifies the need to integrate feedback from the shop floor into the enterprise business systems.

Quality is a key element to success for any manufacturer, and the fundamental prerequisite for quality is measurement. In the discrete parts industry, quality is attained through inspection of parts but typically there is a long latency between machining, quality measurement and part/process assessment. Since manufacturing systems are by their nature imperfect, it is imperative to indentify and rectify out-of-tolerance processes as soon as possible. Rapid quality feedback into the factory operation is not a complex concept, however, the collection and dissemination of the necessary measurement data in a timely and tightly integrated manner is challenging. This paper discusses Web-enabled, real-time quality data based on the integration of MTConnect and quality measurement reporting data. MTConnect is an open factory communication standard that leverages the Internet and uses XML for data representation. The quality data is represented in MTConnect as XML to represent Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) output results. A pilot implementation to produce Web-enabled, real-time quality results in a standard MT-Connect XML representation from Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) inspections will be discussed.