e-F@ctory Alliance

The steel and metals industry generates substantial revenue for operators and business organizations every year, while helping drive the national economy forward on a solid footing. The result is a metals industry market with intense competition — on price, on production lead time, and above all on quality.

Metal cutting processes — grinding, turning, milling and facing of workpieces — depend on "accurate, highly precise quality inspection" if the work created at each stage is to meet the quality the customer's drawing specifies, and if the chance of NG parts is to be reduced to 0%. A metal cutting plant or a made-to-drawing metal shop that has high-resolution dimensional measuring machinery and can hold production to standard therefore holds a key advantage in outcompeting its rivals.

Today there is one tool Mitsubishi would like to introduce: "Smart Feedback with Measuring System", an automatic measuring set developed by Tosei (Thailand), an e-F@ctory Alliance partner and a specialist in automated measuring systems for manufacturing lines across many sectors — metals, automotive, bearings, household electrical appliances and a great many electronic components.

Precise measurement, defect detection — advanced innovation from TOSEI

The Smart Feedback with Measuring System automatic dimensional measuring set helps inspect and control the dimensions of metal workpieces so they conform to the specified drawing, while reducing the errors and deviations that can arise in the production process.

What makes the Smart Feedback system special — and what has won it acceptance among metals industry operators — is that it sends a signal back to the machinery in the metal cutting process so that those machines can offset the cutting tool automatically. Every workpiece comes out to the same quality, and operator time is reduced because there is no need to watch or measure workpiece dimensions manually all the time.

SCADA GENESIS64 — what makes Smart Feedback special: easy control, quality in every workpiece

Beyond that, the data the Smart Feedback with Measuring System measures is sent to a central data centre to be gathered, sorted, stored, processed and presented in real time — particularly critical data such as "production quality", which is then used to analyse a range of outcomes: machine status on the production line, Statistical Process Control (SPC) and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), all through the future-facing software "SCADA GENESIS64" developed by Mitsubishi Electric.

Summary of the strengths of the Smart Feedback with Measuring System automatic measuring set

■ Sends measurement results back to the machinery on the production line to offset the cutting tool automatically ■ Makes it easy to control workpiece dimensions and stay within spec ■ Measuring systems can be designed in many configurations to suit different types of work ■ Convenient inspection and data management on SCADA GENESIS64 software ■ Confidence in the quality of every single workpiece ■ Reduces the time supervising staff spend on the job ■ Increases production process efficiency