No abstract

The rate of adoption of digital solutions in manufacturing environments remains low despite the benefits these can bring. This is particularly acute among industrial small and medium enterprises (SMEs), who typically do not have the confidence to adopt new technologies and for which cost and a lack of skills remain key barriers. Most digital solutions require some type of visualisation component, being a vital way to the interpret and use effectively the data. Data visualisation on its own provides an opportunity to bridge the gap of digitalisation in SMEs by providing them invaluable process insights in an efficient manner without requiring high levels of training or expertise. However, as with other digital technologies, software components such as data analytics and visualisation are commonly developed, deployed, and maintained by a third party, and SMEs lack the expertise to understand how to implement or change visualisations and how they can be applied in the manufacturing domain. The Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring approach proposes using off-the-shelf components, both hardware and software, to develop low-cost digital solutions with minimal expert knowledge. The underlying Shoestring architecture enables the incremental connectivity of different solution components using a service-oriented approach. This paper introduces the implementation of visualisation-as-a-service, where the visual components of a digital solution is dynamically created by a set of reusable, configurable and modular elements. We also introduce the use of templates for the no-code creation of visual solutions, taking advantage of the re-usability of visual components across different digital solutions.

The adoption of digital manufacturing in small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector in the UK is low, yet these technologies offer significant promise to boost productivity. Two major causes of this lack of uptake is the high upfront cost of digital technologies, and the skill gap preventing understanding and implementation. This paper describes a common approach to data capture and visualisation that is cheap and simple. Cheap through the utilisation of low cost and readily available consumer technologies, and simple through the pre-defined flexible approaches that require a minimum of configuration. This approach was implemented on three demonstrators to showcase the flexibility of the approach. These were a tool condition monitoring system, a job and machine status monitor, and a robotic process monitor. The development process resulted in a software architecture where processes were separated and communicated by message queues. We conclude that a service oriented architecture would be the best system for carrying forward the development process. This research was conducted as part of the wider EPSRC Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring project.