The invention relates to the field of operating, monitoring and controlling mills of the mining industry. It specifically relates to a system and a method for in-line determination of the characteristics of worn balls and pieces thereof, which have been ejected from a semi-autogenous mineral grinding (SAG) mill to the external classifiers.

A system and method are described herein for tracking and instructing assembly of flexible modular products on a single assembly line. The systems enable methods for tracking components and procedures as well as tools used in the assembly of components using various sensors and devices along the line. The systems also enable methods for instructing and tracking usage of tools for procedures. Data from various sensors, stations, nodes, and relating to each particular assembly item are stored in a distributed ledger that is verified and secured for use as a production log including each action taken on the assembly item which may later be used for audit purposes as well as to increase confidence in the assembly of product variations on the assembly line.

Industrial production facilities (such as can making factories) may tag with radio frequency near proximity devices their tooling (knockouts, dies, punches, etc) so that the tooling may be instantly located on any particular machine or location in the facility, by known critical characteristics of the tooling, particularly diameter. This is possible because each machine will also have a reader for the tags, and other areas such as inventory shelves, inspection stations, doors, loading docks, shipping departments and even vendors may also have the reading devices. Passive RFID tags and readers may be used for this purpose. The invention may be open to other businesses so inventory may be located across manufacturing systems and/or businesses.

Described herein is a method for setting up and/or reconfiguring an industrial plant, in particular for the manufacture of motor vehicles or sub-assemblies thereof. The method includes providing a plurality of mobile processing stations, each mobile processing station comprising a palletisable platform and at least one interface unit provided on the palletisable platform and configured for the coupling of the mobile processing station with one or more further adjacent mobile processing stations; arranging mobile processing stations according to a pre-set layout; and coupling at least one interface unit of each mobile processing station with the at least one interface unit of one or more further mobile processing adjacent stations thereto. Each interface unit includes at least one of the following: an electrical and/or electronic coupling device; a fluidic coupling device; and a mechanical coupling device.

A selection support device that supports selection of a work machine to be used for work from among a plurality of work machines, the selection support device including: a history information acquisition unit configured to acquire history information on a use history of each work machine; a specifying unit configured to specify a degree of use of each work machine based on the history information; and a selection unit configured to preferentially select a work machine with a small degree of use as a work machine to be used for work.

Provided is a system and method for minimizing non-productive idle times within an automation process executed by an automation facility, the system including a model memory which stores a probabilistic model of a distribution of object exchange times of objects used or consumed in the automation process; and an optimizer adapted to calculate optimal assignments of objects to magazine positions of an object storage magazine depending on the probabilistic model and depending on a sequence of productive non-idle times of objects used or consumed in process steps of the automation process.

An opt-in from at least one user of a plurality of users associated with at least one tool of a plurality of tools is received. An authentication associated with a first opted-in user of the plurality of users associated with an access of a first tool of the plurality of tools is determined. A set of credentials required to operate the first tool associated with the first opted-in user is verified. A request to an Internet of things (IoT) receiver device is transmitted. A response from an IoT transmitter device is received. In response to determining that the first user is utilizing required equipment to operate the first tool, power to the first tool is supplied.

A method is disclosed that includes the operations below: determining, by a processing unit, that arrival times of a lot arrived at N process stages are less than processing times of the lot predetermined to be processed at the N process stages, N being a positive integer; comparing, by the processing unit, idle times of multiple tools in the N process stages; and processing the lot with a first tool of the tools at each one of the N process stages, wherein the first tool of the tools has a shortest idle time.

A method controls sheet metal processing of a sheet metal component to be manufactured with a plurality of processing steps. The method includes: A) reading in machine tool data and data of the sheet metal component to be manufactured, which includes (in any order): a) reading in the processing steps of the sheet metal component to be manufactured; b) reading in property parameters of the sheet metal component to be manufactured; c) reading in at least one basic processing capability of the machine tools; and d) reading in capability parameters of the machine tools. The method also includes B) creating a machine tool matrix made from machine tools suitable for manufacturing the sheet metal component; C) determining an optimized processing sequence in a form of a sequence of machine tools from the machine tool matrix; and D) outputting the optimized processing sequence.

A method for dynamically compensating angle errors when operating a machine tool that includes at least one fixture for a workpiece, in or on which a workpiece can be secured, at least one toolholder, in or on which a tool, in particular a drill, can be secured and can be rotationally driven by a rotational drive of the toolholder. The rotational drive including at least one horizontal drive by which the toolholder — for purposes of machining the workpiece —can execute movements in at least one horizontal plane of the machine tool. The machine tool further includes at least one vertical drive by which the toolholder can execute movements in a vertical direction of the machine tool, and at least one controller to which the rotational drive, the horizontal drive, and the vertical drive are functionally assigned.