Monitoring Circuit for Unified Event Streams in Production Plants
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional monitoring systems in industrial production plants fail to provide an overview of the entire machinery due to complex interrelations between machines, leading to potential production stops and high defective goods rates, as they rely on proprietary data formats and require prior knowledge of data sources for near-real-time monitoring.
Innovation Solution
A monitoring circuit that transforms status data from multiple sensors and actuators into a universal event data stream, using timestamps and meta-data to enable real-time, correlated monitoring across machines, regardless of proprietary formats, and generates events only on status changes, facilitating near-real-time oversight and analysis.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If proprietary data formats are used by different machines, then each machine can provide accurate status data, but it becomes difficult to obtain an overview of the entire production plant
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a universal data interface that can receive and process status data from multiple different proprietary formats (e.g., Siemens, Allen Bradley, Omron) through a single standardized endpoint. This universal interface translates various machine-specific protocols into a common internal representation, allowing the monitoring system to handle diverse data sources without requiring separate integration logic for each manufacturer, thus resolving the contradiction between maintaining data accuracy and reducing integration complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The monitoring circuit acts as an intermediary layer between the proprietary machine interfaces and the visualization system. It receives status data in various proprietary formats, normalizes them into a universal internal format, and then presents unified data to the user interface. This intermediary function decouples the complexity of multiple proprietary protocols from both the data sources and the visualization system, allowing accurate data collection while simplifying overall system complexity.
2Speed
If status data from all machines is monitored continuously, then real-time overview is achieved, but data transmission bandwidth is consumed excessively
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of continuous data transmission, the system implements periodic polling at optimized intervals and uses event-driven updates that transmit data only when status changes occur. The monitoring circuit buffers status data locally and only transmits updated information when relevant changes are detected, thereby maintaining real-time monitoring capability while significantly reducing unnecessary bandwidth consumption compared to continuous streaming of all data.
Solution Approach 2:
The system extracts and transmits only the essential status changes that are relevant for monitoring, rather than transmitting complete continuous data streams from all machines. By filtering and selecting only meaningful status transitions (e.g., error states, significant parameter changes), the system achieves real-time awareness of critical events while minimizing bandwidth usage by excluding redundant unchanged data.
3Adaptability or versatility
If multiple proprietary data formats are supported, then all machinery can be monitored with a single application, but the processing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The monitoring circuit incorporates a universal data reception interface that can handle multiple proprietary protocols (Siemens, Allen Bradley, Omron, etc.) through a single standardized endpoint. This universal interface automatically detects and adapts to different data formats, translating them into a common internal representation without requiring separate processing logic for each manufacturer, thereby achieving broad machine compatibility while keeping processing complexity manageable.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically adjusts its data processing parameters based on the detected machine type and protocol. When a new machine format is detected, the system automatically configures appropriate parsing and translation parameters for that specific format, allowing flexible support for multiple proprietary standards without hardcoding complex processing logic for each one, thus balancing versatility with processing simplicity.
Data Source
AI summary
A monitoring circuit comprises at least one interface for obtaining status data of a plurality of sensors or actuators and for communicating with a remote server. Processing circuitry of the monitoring circuit is configured to obtain a plurality of units of status data of the plurality of sensors or actuators, the plurality of sensors or actuators being part of machinery or being arranged in an environment of the machinery. The processing circuitry is further configured to transform the plurality of units of status data in an event data stream comprising a plurality of events. An event comprises information on at least one unit of status data. The processing circuitry is further configured to provide the event data stream to the remote server.