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Global vs. Local:
Efficient establishment of standards and clear separation between sites
Visual Shop Floor is utilized across various industries by medium-sized and large industrial companies to optimize production and logistics processes. Many of these enterprises operate multiple sites. To ensure transparency and consistent standards across all locations, Visual Shop Floor has always facilitated structured mapping and representation of individual sites within a centralized system installation.
What has changed and why is it important?
In the latest version, we have implemented numerous improvements that allow clear separation between global, cross-site resources and local, site-specific resources, as well as general system settings. Resources include all units for data management (connections, data sources, data recorders, models) and other units such as widgets, dashboards, audit templates, or meeting templates.
Global resources
Global resources are centrally managed and can be used across locations to ensure consistent and unified Shop Floor Management across multiple sites. This simplifies the implementation of corporate standards and maximizes efficiency at a global level. For instance, standardized dashboards or uniform KPIs can be developed centrally and deployed across all locations. Global resources thus support the uniformity and efficiency of corporate processes, reinforce corporate identity and ensure that all sites operate according to the same criteria and guidelines.
Local resources
Local resources are managed and adjusted directly at the site level to meet specific requirements. This enables flexible adaptation to local conditions and enhances on-site efficiency. For instance, individual dashboards or specialized KPIs can be created and implemented separately for each site. Local resources thus promote the autonomy of sites and provide the opportunity to address local peculiarities.
System settings
General settings within Visual Shop Floor, such as site and user management, permissions assignment, license management, and language settings, are centrally administered at the system level. This centralized administration ensures consistent handling of crucial administrative functions across all locations. By managing these settings centrally, it preserves system integrity and reduces administrative complexity, ultimately leading to improved efficiency.
The main advantages of global and local settings
01.
Easy and intuitive management of multiple locations in a central installation02.
Standardization of Shop Floor Management through the use of standards and templates across multiple sites03.
Central and efficient management of data, visualizations and templates04.
Strict separation of data and management of access and visibility through a permission system05.
Decentralized creation and management of site-specific content
More features
New data connectors for extended system integration
Visual Shop Floor provides numerous out-of-the-box connectors that can be used to collect data from existing systems within the company. This ensures that processes can be monitored in real time and that employees always have access to up-to-date information, enabling them to respond quickly to deviations and disruptions.
With the latest release of Visual Shop Floor, two additional standards have been added, creating the possibility to integrate even more existing data sources from within the company into Visual Shop Floor.
Connector for InfluxDB V2
InfluxDB V2 builds on the capabilities of its predecessor and integrates enhanced security features as well as the new query language Flux. In addition, it enables greater scalability in processing time series.
The dedicated connector for InfluxDB V2 in Visual Shop Floor offers a simple and intuitive input interface that makes it possible to define specific parameters and settings.
Connector for Apache Kafka
Apache Kafka, developed by the Apache Software Foundation, is a powerful stream-processing system for managing and processing large volumes of real-time data streams. It is based on a highly scalable and reliable messaging architecture. In production environments, Apache Kafka is used, for example, for real-time recording and processing of process parameters, as well as in IIoT scenarios that require a high throughput rate.
With the newly added Kafka connector, Visual Shop Floor provides the ability to seamlessly integrate data from a Kafka server into shop floor management, making further real-time information available. Especially in the context of process data such as sensor values or machine parameters, this enables real-time monitoring of resources and the timely elimination of disruptions.
Easier management of data recorders with the “Run Now” button
