The challenge
Production teams may know when a line has stopped but lack a consistent record of the reason, duration and affected equipment. Data from PLCs, operator logs and maintenance records is often disconnected, limiting the usefulness of shift and weekly reports.
Maintenance teams also need to distinguish process-related stoppages from machine faults, utility interruptions or communications issues. A large-scale controls replacement would add risk and cost before the underlying problem is understood.
The goal is to create a reliable baseline from available production and machine data, make downtime events easier to review and provide maintenance and operations teams with actionable trends.
Our approach
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Map the production process
Work with operators and engineering staff to map the line, identify critical assets and agree on useful measures such as run state, cycle counts, fault states and utility consumption.
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Integrate existing signals
Read appropriate PLC, SCADA and meter data through supported protocols or edge gateways. Avoid changing machine control logic unless separately engineered and authorised.
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Build operational dashboards
Present line state, alarm history, downtime categories and energy trends in dashboards that match the plant’s operating rhythm and reporting needs.
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Review the baseline
Validate event definitions with operators, compare dashboard data with shift records and establish improvement targets only after a dependable baseline exists.
System architecture
How the layers connect, from the people using the system down to the equipment in the field.
- Production supervisors
- Maintenance planners
- Plant engineering and management
- Shift and daily production summaries
- Downtime categories and event timelines
- Energy trends per line or asset where metered
- SCADA historian or approved data store
- Dashboards and scheduled reports
- Controlled data export to business systems
- Edge gateway
- OPC UA or Modbus interfaces
- Segmentation between OT and IT
- Existing PLCs and HMIs
- Machine status and fault signals
- Power and utility meters where available
What we’d deploy
- Gateway-based integration with suitable existing PLCs and SCADA
- Common definitions for run, idle, fault and planned-stop states
- Alarm and downtime event history
- Dashboards for line status and shift reporting
- Energy monitoring where suitable meters are installed
- Role-based access, backups and OT network safeguards
Target outcomes
Targets we would design and report against, not measured results from a named client. Actual results depend on the baseline established in the audit.
