Romanian, Finnish companies remotely implement major Internet of Things projects amidst COVID-19 pandemic

Marking a milestone in Romania-Finland joint IT projects, Harsha Engineers, a Romanian subsidiary of India’s Harsha Engineers Ltd., one of the world’s leading manufacturers of bearing cages, jointly with Zyfra, Finnish-Russian industrial digitalization leader, has successfully completed first project in the country to remotely implement an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) system.

An industrial equipment monitoring system is an essential component of digital transformation and industrial internet of things (IIoT) environment. It has proved to be in-line with the up-to-date requirements for cost effective manufacturing.

As a part of the project, Harsha Engineers has connected its equipment in Ghimbav Brasov in Romania to Zyfra’s MDCplus real-time machine monitoring and manufacturing data collection system.

The MDCplus system is designed to track machine operation, personnel productivity and tracking of parts that moves across various manufacturing stages in the shop floor.

With improved reliability of data, its tailored reports and charts benefit the organization in evaluating and eliminate unreasonable downtime, overall equipment efficiency (OEE) improvement and reduction of production costs. On average, equipment monitoring increases production efficiency by 20%.

Through the equipment monitoring system each machine automatically transfers data about its own performance into a single digital system. Data about the equipment’s condition, workload and its operating mode are sent from the machines to computers and other devices, making it possible to promptly eliminate downtime, as well as providing an objective evaluation of the quality of machine operators’ work in real-time.

“Developments in the field of Industry 4.0 allow to Romanian companies today to create an economic effect without huge investments in modernization of production. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with traditional digitalization solutions based on the Industrial Internet of things (IIoT), such as equipment monitoring systems, will contribute not only to increasing production efficiency, but also to the competitiveness of Romanian industry globally”, said Mircea Bucur, Director General at Harsha Engineers Europe.

“To connect a machine to the monitoring system, it has to be integrated into the local internal network of an enterprise. It takes just a few steps to connect the machine to the system remotely and to start collecting data with its help. Continuous improvement of the system is particularly necessary in context of the high alert on account of the coronavirus pandemic. It also helps accelerate integration of monitoring in production,” says Vitaly Tuyev, Product Owner at Zyfra.

“The Zyfra’s MDCplus real-time machine monitoring and manufacturing data collection system boosts efficiency of 330 plants worldwide, so we are ready to share best practices with our Romanian colleagues. By 2021 we are looking at more than 200 MDCplus installations in Romania,” said Aleksandr Zadorozhnyi, international sales director at Zyfra.

Zyfra has connected 10,000 CNC Machines to its MDCplus system. The projects have been implemented in Bulgaria, China, Finland, France, India, Turkey and Singapore.

This is the second project for Zyfra in Romania. In 2019, the company has connected more than 10 computerised numerical control (CNC) machines at different facilities owned by Formplast in Orastie, south-western Transylvania. Formplast is a plastic injection molds manufacturer for automotive industry.

The integrated package of equipment was supplied, installed and configured by Zyfra, which is also supporting in the monitoring system maintenance and its operation, along with user training support for a period of one year.

“Since implementation, 10% increase in machine utilization has been achieved immediately after deployment. Further productivity growth was generated thanks to reducing unplanned downtime and due to the transparency of the process, increasing the overall production culture.” said Mihai Giurgiu, Owner & Director General at Formplast.

MDCplus comes with a power consumption monitoring option which helps to carry out precise and objective data collection of energy loss from machines in various modes and conditions. It supports the analysis of the quality indicators of the power supply system based on the in-built power consumption data register.

In addition, the automated service and repair support helps to reduce repair times and increase the lifespan of the equipment through optimal-speed and optimal-quality preventative servicing works. Also, with the in-built predictive analytics, the system can predict equipment breakdowns and control tool consumption.