Mitsubishi Electric Teams with Oracle for e-F@ctory

Mitsubishi Electric Automation has announced the addition of the Oracle Manufacturing Operations Center to its e-F@ctory manufacturing solution. e-F@ctory is Mitsubishi Electric’s vision for manufacturing that unifies its control hardware and networks with enterprise IT systems offered by strategic partner companies, including IBM, Microsoft and now, Oracle. The company says it the first hardware vendor with an Oracle tested and approved connection to the Oracle Manufacturing Operations Center.

“By combining the analytical power of Oracle Manufacturing Operations Center and the integrated architecture of the e-F@ctory solutions, customers now receive real-time information about their plant production,” said Bob Miller, solutions marketing manager, Mitsubishi Electric Automation. “Monitoring machine performance can also reduce downtime. By logging the system performance and run-times more accurately, timely intercession and preventive maintenance can be performed.”

“Production scheduling also can be controlled more accurately, automatically helping to ensure the best overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and delivery times. Since quality can be monitored for individual parts, if a quality issue arises, changes can be made automatically to resolve root-cause, thereby reducing waste and downtime,” said Miller.

“Working closely with Mitsubishi Electric Automation for data collection allows us to connect to a broad range of industrial hardware platforms,” said Manish Modi, Oracle Vice President, Applications Development. “Having a viable hardware solution provides the ability to reduce the possible points of failure on the plant floor. With the ease of connection and setup of the Mitsubishi hardware, combined with our pre-built Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), we feel our customers will be able to realize a faster ROI, not only on the implementation of the system but on their whole production facility as well.”

Mitsubishi’s Miller says that customers will be able to “test drive” the system. “We will encourage potential customers to demo the hardware. With assistance from Oracle and Mitsubishi Electric Automation, they can connect up to three machines on their plant floor, and run our partner solution. At the end of the trial period, the customer will then be able to place orders for the needed components,” said Miller.

“Customers now have the opportunity to test drive a system that includes plant floor hardware along with Mitsubishi’s eF@ctory solution and Oracle Manufacturing Operations Center,” Oracle’s Modi added. “This will allow them to experience the full potential of the solution and understand the impact it can have across the enterprise.”