From Manual Intervention to Real-Time Operations Management with Multitrade's Industry 4.0 Solution

Interview with Multitrade

For many enterprises, factory automation is stillperformed without the use of intelligent systems. Instead, most processes areconducted manually, requiring extensive human intervention. To address thissituation and enable the realization of Industry 4.0, various control systemsmust be employed to optimize equipment automation that enable accurate,precise, and rapid factory operations.

Lights-out manufacturing refers to factories that operateautonomously and require no human presence. These robot-run facilities often donot need lighting, and may consist of several machines functioning in the dark.In Malaysia, the sugar production sector has seen the realization of lights-outmanufacturing. However, although this process has not been widely adopted inother sectors, remarkable progress has been made with the assistance ofMultitrade. Based in Malaysia, Multitrade is an industrial automation solutionsprovider and systems integrator. The company integrates a wide range ofproducts, including Advantech’s IIoT solutions, to provide fully integratedturnkey solutions for Industry 4.0. Multitrade collaborated with Advantech toleverage its factory automation offerings and develop an integratedsoftware/hardware solution aimed at Malaysian sugar manufacturers. Together,Multitrade and Advantech designed a two-pronged solution to satisfy demands formachine monitoring and power management.

Machine Monitoring System

Even with standard operating procedures, tasks such asequipment monitoring, startup/shutdown, and setup are generally conductedmanually. This process involves inspecting every machine, checking allparameters, and setting or updating configurations. As a result, suchoperations rely heavily on the presence of skilled operators. For large-scale factoriesor companies with multiple sites, the efficiency of these manual tasks is evenmore affected by the skillsets of the labor force. However, by automatingprocedures for irregular industrial environments, Multitrade was able tostreamline operations and optimize factory management. Multitrade provided aneasy-to-use solution for connecting various types of programmable logiccontrollers (PLCs) via the WebAccess/SCADA platform—Advantech’s browser-basedSCADA software package aimed at supervisory control, data acquisition, and datavisualization applications.

The solution comprised Advantech’s UNO-2483G fanlessembedded automation computer equipped with WebAccess/SCADA for communicatingwith various branded PLCs (Siemens, Allen-Bradley, and Mitsubishi) tofacilitate the collection of real-time machine data for visualization and alarmnotifications. Using integrated hardware and software, this simple solutionenhances the management of machine status and operating parameters, such assystem availability, operating duration, equipment downtime, and causes ofdowntime.

After accurate, real-time information is collected andtransmitted to the back-end server, data analysis allows managers to identifyworkflow bottlenecks and optimize subsystems for maximum efficiency. This notonly drastically reduces equipment downtime, but also enables predictivemaintenance for extending the equipment service life. By enabling thecentralized monitoring of real-time machine data, Multitrade’s integratedsoftware/ hardware package provides an innovative solution for transitioning tointelligent automation, while enhancing overall productivity.

Energy Management System

To also satisfy customer demands for energy efficiency,Multitrade once again turned to Advantech for a cost-effective energymanagement solution. Accordingly, Advantech provided power meters that supportthe Modbus RTU and TCP protocols, an ADAM4520 converter, and an EKI-2528unmanaged Ethernet switch to enable network communication for power monitoringand energy management operations.

With this solution, Multitrade brought a critical toolfor daily operation to the factory floor. The energy management system not onlyintegrates diverse equipment data, but also provides actionable insights forproactively managing and optimizing production, maintenance, energy usage, andplanning. The system provides the key components for effective factorymanagement by identifying potential equipment and system issues in advance andfacilitating the diagnosis and prevention of machine failures.

With the growing deployment and cost of complex,high-density electrical equipment, manufacturers are facing increasing pressureto secure reliable sources of energy efficient power. To maintain optimal plantperformance around the clock, Multitrade needed to deliver the power qualityand reliability required to meet current and future equipment demands. Theenergy management platform developed by Multitrade harnesses Advantech’s dataacquisition tools for collecting real-time equipment data in order to providean overview of all power and energy systems.

Domain-Focused Industry 4.0 Solutions Provider

The benefits of remote management and data collection areclearly apparent. With Multitrade’s monitoring solution, power management canbe integrated with machine management to enable managers to identify andpreempt any production issues. Furthermore, all collected data can be used asan operational benchmark for machine learning in order to establish amanagement platform that is capable of automatically identifying faults orpotentially critical conditions before they occur.

Leveraging 20 years of experience in the fields offactory automation, process automation, and software development, Multitradehas joined Advantech’s WISEPaaS VIP Alliance in the hopes of fostering furtheropportunities to collaborate and develop fully integrated industrial turnkeysolutions aimed at Industry 4.0. Although the typically large-scale scope anddiversity of data collected can make factory automation highly challenging,Multitrade has proven that it has the knowledge and expertise to develop asolution for even the most complex tasks.

Moving forward, in keeping with their mission to betterunderstand and serve customers, Multitrade plans to transform itself into afully domain-focused Industry 4.0 solutions provider. Inspired by Advantech’scocreation business strategies, Multitrade will continue to collaborate withAdvantech on the development of application-oriented IoT solutions. By enablingreal-time operations management, Multitrade’s solutions have propelledcompanies, such as those in Malaysia’s sugar manufacturing sector, to newlevels of efficiency and brought them closer to realizing the Industry 4.0vision.