Complete Work Order Operations Automatically Using Equipment Signals at Workstations

Welcome to the demo of the 25A feature, complete work order operations automatically using equipment signals at workstations. Manufacturing plants are increasingly equipped with connected equipment, which are capable of producing machine events, such as execution start, progress report, and execution stop.

With this upgrade for workstations that use connected equipment, you can now automatically record completed and rejected quantities while executing production, leveraging the signals received via IoT communications. You can optionally also receive execution start and execution stop signals from the connected equipment. Manufacturers can now increase their operators' productivity by helping them focus on the actual production tasks.

With connected equipments, real time status and progress updates on production performance are automatically provided. Now, let's look at a short demo scenario for this feature. I will launch the execute production at a workstation task in Work Execution work area. I will select a workstation and check into it. This workstation has been configured to support automated execution of work order operations.

After I have checked into the workstation, the equipment is going to send me an execution start signal. I will view the execution status for the work order operation in progress. The equipment is also configured to send execution progress by sending completion and rejected quantities. I will view the automated reporting of work order operation completion transactions at the workstation.

This would conclude the production operator's experience of this feature. We will then see how a production supervisor can look at the operational events received from the equipment by launching the operational events task in Work Execution work area. This would be followed by looking at the setup enhancements. We will configure a workstation to support automated execution of work order operations.

Before we get into the demo, let's take a look at how data generated by connected equipment flows from the factory floor to Oracle Fusion Manufacturing Cloud. Industrial IoT gateways or middleware would be configured to communicate with the connected equipment through industrial communication protocols. The gateway or middleware would first transform this information into a format that Oracle Fusion Cloud manufacturing understands, and then post to it.

Upon receiving this transformed payload, Oracle Fusion Cloud processes that event and then takes appropriate business actions. The event types supported in 25A are as follows: asset fault, asset status, operation execution start, operation execution stop, and quantity report.

As shown here on the screen, the payload consists of two main sections. Entity code, event time, and event type code are mandatory fields. The entity code here is the asset number of the connected equipment. Sample payload for all the events can be found in the references shared at the end of the demo.

Let's get into the demo. I launch the Execute Production at Workstation task in Work Execution work area. I can now check in to the workstation. Notice that no execution is currently running at this workstation, and the workstation is in idle status. Once we receive the execution start signal from the equipment, the workstation status changes to in use and the execution status section shows the execution currently in progress.

I can check into the workstation at any stage prior to receiving the signal, or after receiving the signal from the equipment. I check in to the workstation. This workstation is enabled for automated execution of work order operations. Notice that the manual entry fields for reporting completions, rejections, or inspections are hidden by default.

We are now waiting for the equipment to send us completion or rejection quantities. As soon as we receive a completion or rejection quantity from the equipment, the production summary section will be updated.

If for some reason, the automated equipment is not able to send the progress report or completion and rejection quantities, the operator can choose to manually report these quantity by clicking on the Edit Action button in the UI. This way, the ability for the operator to report manually is not taken away when the workstation is in automated execution mode.

Coming back to our demo, we can now see a few completion quantities coming in from the equipment. The operator does not have to manually report these quantities at all. The transaction is automatically reported. Execution can be stopped, either by receiving a signal from the equipment, or an operator can manually click on Stop to stop execution. The operator can also check out at any time during or after the execution.

Now, let's see how production supervisors can view the history of operational events received from the equipment. I launch the Operational Events task in Work Execution work area. I'm presented with the list of operational events received by the equipment for this organization. I can search by event type and filter by event type and event time.

Notice that the operational events list is separated by two tabs. One shows the list of manufacturing operation events that could not be processed, and the reason why they could not be processed. For example, the first event in the list for operation execution start could not be processed because the asset for which the event was received is not mapped to a resource instance.

The second tab called All, shows the list of all the operational events received from the equipment. Lastly, manufacturing engineers can enable a workstation for automated execution of work order operations by setting this flag in the Workstation Setup page. The Workstation Setup page can be launched in the work definition work area by clicking on the task called Workstations.

This concludes the demo for this feature. For more details on enabling this feature and the configurations required, refer to the Manufacturing 25A What's New for the following features: complete work order operations automatically using equipment signals at workstations, and create automatic production exceptions for equipment related events at a workstation. Thank you.