Digital Transformation of a Production Line: Network Design, Online Data Collection and Energy Monitoring

The concept of Industry 4.0 originates from the will to introduce the benefits of digital computation into new and existing industrial plants to save time, materials and energy. The digital transformation requires that all machinery of the production line are connected together and with the enterprise applications, to capture and analyze data across all manufacturing stages. Then, such collected data can be exploited to take strategic decision on the production and to monitor it, reacting to unexpected behaviors and thus reducing downtime and maintenance costs. This article aims at supporting production engineers approaching digital transformation by exemplifying its key elements on a real life scenario, the Industrial Computer Engineering laboratory of the University of Verona. First of all, the article discusses network design, as communication is an enabler of the other technologies. Network is realized through automatic network synthesis from requirements and characteristics of the production line data flow. Then, the paper discusses data collection and the construction of a digital twin monitoring power consumption of the production line, with the goal of detecting any discrepancy between real time data and digital twin data. This allows to trigger an early intervention on the line, to guarantee an effective maintenance.