Oracle: a modern platform for smart connected factories

Manufacturing Global takes a closer look at the ways in which Oracle can help the manufacturing industry manage and improve its processes.

As the concept of digital factories continues to change the landscape of manufacturing, the industry has become an increasingly competitive environment, in which companies are constantly looking for ways to improve the efficiency of their operations and the quality of their products.  

As part of its solutions, Oracle provides a modern platform for manufacturers to collaboratively manage and improve their processes. By leveraging cloud, IoT, big data analytics, predictive intelligence and supply chain tools, Oracle’s connected smart factory platform helps manufacturers to better predict and resolve maintenance requirements, correlate quality issues, reduce downtime and improve quality. 

Improving cost, efficiency and quality visibility 

Oracle provides a modern solution to monitor all factories globally with a 360 degree view of operations. The Oracle smart connected factory uses automated consolidation of real life information, issue indicators and key performance indicators, to replace old style processes driven by spreadsheets and BI reports sent via email.

The platform also helps manufacturers make the best decisions based on a correlation of data from machines, work benches, inventories, asset management systems, quality systems, manufacturing planning systems, ERP systems, MES systems and logistics.

Oracle also provides a ‘cloud’ solution on premise to address local requirements for disconnected factories or to adhere to data privacy regulations.

Monitoring production performance and predictive maintenance 

By leveraging predictive analytics, Oracle’s solution provides a full monitoring service of factory efficiencies, in order to detect any unusual production behaviour. By correlating this data across the maintenance systems and production process manufacturers can optimise their equipment downtime, repair activities and spare parts availability. 

By correlating data in real-time, this solution provides manufacturers with the ability to anticipate and schedule maintenance demands into no impact or low production impact. This solution also helps to automate the planning and procurement of spare parts to minimise expensive, last minute purchases.

To track the root cause of issues, the platform also uses big data analytics to sift through service activity data, reports, supplier related data and sensor data to select the right spare parts and supplier.

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Monitoring assets and predict failure 

Oracle’s connected smart factory solution can also provide manufacturers with machine monitoring platforms to detect and predict unusual behaviours and recommend the best action to fix the anticipated failure.

By correlating data across multiple sensors, this platform identifies and recommends based on probability and anticipated time of failure, as well as helping to organise the repair of operations using the best available resources. 

With the use of industrial IoT technology, production teams can also apply remote configuration and actions without the need to physically operate equipment.

Monitoring quality and applying best practices

Along the entire production cycle, Oracle’s solution provides quality monitoring to predictively detect deviation in quality. By correlating quality and production data across multiple stages within the manufacturing process the solution can help to identify new quality failure patterns and provide new capabilities for best actions to take when an issue is detected.

This platform helps to optimise the scraping and rejecting levels based on operator and quality sensors. It provides the right information to run an immediate correlation and root cause analysis to identify the source.

Easily extend legacy for industry 4.0 transformation

With the use of an open platform, Oracle’s connected smart factory platform is a non-intrusive solution that increases transparency of factory data and performance indicators.

The platform also provides insight into the best ways to collaborate with new operational excellence partners, startups and OT OEMs.

Using open technologies helps the platform to quickly implement predictive maintenance and proactive actions.

For more information on Oracle’s industrial manufacturing solutions, click here! 

For more information on manufacturing topics - please take a look at the latest edition of Manufacturing Global.

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