Validation of a real-time automated production-monitoring system

Sammanfattning: In today’s industry, companies are, to an increasing degree, beginning to embrace the concept of industry 4.0. One of these companies is Diab which has a factory located in Laholm where they manufacture composite material. Some of the machines at the factory are older with outdated control systems and require a way to log data in real-time. The goal of the project is to create a working prototype system that can monitor the production flow in real-time by using sensors to collect data about the work efficiency of the machine, measuring the idle time when the machine is working and when it’s not and storing this data in a database which can be accessible by a Graphical User Interface (GUI). The purpose is to investigate the requirements to get a fully operatable system and what it takes to maintain it to get an idea if the system should be self-developed by the company or buy/license from a third party. The system was built by using a NodeMCU ESP32, a Raspberry Pi 4B and a SparkFun DistanceSensor Breakout VL53L1X, and for the software to program the NodeMCU ESP32, Arduino IDE was used; Java language was used to develop the server on the Raspberry Pi and, together with MariaDB, to store the data. The tests that were conducted showed that the data could be displayed within a second in the created GUI but could not guarantee a reading of a passing block; however, it gave a good overview of the workflow of the machine. An improvement of the system is suggested by using visual-based object detection. An overview of the production in real-time can allow for future possibilities of optimising the production flow and, with an improvement of the system, can increase the automation of the production, which can bring the company closer to the concept of industry 4.0.