How to Build the Data Foundation for Smart Factories

A data foundation refers to the basic infrastructure used for storing, processing, and managing data.

 It can encompass physical devices or software tools that serve as platforms for collecting, storing, processing, and transmitting data, such as databases, data warehouses, data lakes, data centers, and cloud computing platforms. These provide the foundational structure for data management and analysis, helping organizations and individuals better manage and utilize their data.

To build a data foundation for a smart factory, it is essential to determine what data needs to be collected, thereby enabling the extraction of valuable insights through analysis.

 For a smart factory, which is characterized by automation, intelligence, and networking in its production systems, industrial equipment is a focal point. Data from this equipment must be collected and monitored for alerts, then centralized in the data foundation for analysis and management.

In this regard, Wutongbolian offers industrial IoT-based data acquisition gateway devices that enable the collection of data from PLCs, instrumentation, industrial robots, CNC machine tools, sensors, and other equipment.

 These devices support uploading data to cloud platforms or upper computers (such as MES systems, configuration software, and monitoring dashboards) via 5G/4G/WIFI/Ethernet, facilitating visualization and data analysis. This helps streamline production processes, enhance production efficiency, and reduce production costs, contributing to the realization of a smart factory.

System Advantages

1. Heterogeneous Data Acquisition: The gateway is equipped with a rich protocol library, enabling the acquisition of data from diverse devices such as PLCs, instrumentation, industrial robots, CNC machine tools, and sensors.

2. Standardized Data Processing: The gateway features protocol conversion and edge computing capabilities, allowing it to cleanse and filter data before uploading it to monitoring platforms and upper computers in specific protocols and formats.

3. Data Security Protection: The gateway ensures data security and integrity through features such as multi-network redundancy, discontinuation resumption, firewalls, and encrypted transmission.

4. Data Interconnection and Sharing: The gateway supports multi-center data distribution, enabling data sharing across multiple distributed system platforms or local systems for joint analysis and enhanced decision-making.