In recent years, manufacturing enterprises have developed rapidly, and the pace of equipment upgrading has also accelerated. However, for existing factories, the number of old equipment remains high, and they fail to meet the requirements for building smart factories. For small and medium-sized manufacturing factories, spending large sums to replace equipment in order to build a smart factory is clearly impractical. Instead, the right solution is to invest modestly in intelligent transformation of old equipment. This not only saves enterprises a significant amount of money but also improves production efficiency, making it easy to achieve a smart factory.

Old equipment is mainly concentrated in small and medium-sized manufacturing factories. As operating costs remain high, many of these factories either struggle to survive in competition or see their profits shrink significantly. The Equipment Status Monitoring System of Alps System Integration (Dalian) Co., Ltd. (abbreviated as “ALSI”) adheres to a user-centric approach and integrates with the factory's existing Andon system. It can monitor equipment status in real time, including operation, fault, standby, idle, etc., and trace all status data in real time. The total investment is only one-third of that required for a PLC, greatly reducing the investment needed for enterprises to build a smart factory.

The Andon system in a factory requires installing three-color lights on the equipment in advance and setting the meaning of different color combinations. There are as many as 27 lighting combinations. However, in practice, the human eye cannot accurately identify subtle differences in color combinations, and the human brain cannot fully memorize and respond quickly. Therefore, if Andon information recording and transmission rely solely on manual labor, the factory's ability to control data from old equipment is extremely limited, let alone carrying out intelligent transformation of old equipment and building a smart factory. The intelligent data collector TS-10, innovatively developed by Alps System Integration (Dalian) Co., Ltd., acts as an external collection terminal. It can automatically capture signals from the three-color light and easily identify each flash of the 27+ lighting combinations. It not only achieves automatic real-time alerts for old equipment faults but also provides other real-time data on equipment operation, fully meeting the data requirements for small and medium-sized manufacturing factories to build smart factories.

With the ALSI Equipment Status Monitoring System, old equipment is no longer a stumbling block to building smart factories. The combination of the Equipment Status Monitoring System and the Andon system can intuitively reflect the OEE of equipment and production lines. Managers can stay informed about equipment and line conditions at any time, providing excellent guidance for improving production collaboration on the line. The Equipment Status Monitoring System can also connect equipment with the management system, achieving full-process monitoring, rapid response, and full-cycle data statistics of the production process. Although the enterprise spends little money, it can still obtain the data needed for a smart factory on demand, easily upgrade old equipment, and build an efficient and innovative smart factory.

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