5 Use cases

This OPC UA companion specification provides support for multiple use cases connected to production machines running both in primary and secondary. Key use cases follow below:

  1. Manage machine’s Overall Equipment Effectiveness, including identifying downtime and its root causes both for machines and for complex lines where it is important to identify which machine is the root cause. To this end, TMC uses TMCStateMachineType, an enhanced PackML state machine, stop reasons and root causes for downtime.
  2. Manage production yield, meaning that high-quality machine or line output data is provided altogether with consumption and dispensing information on the input end and material waste and rejections to compute the line mass balance.To this end, TMC has its backbone in MaterialLoadingPointType, MaterialOutputPointType and MaterialRejectionPointType.
  3. Manage defects, identifying material rejections and their causes, including defect detections and the root cause reasons for detections. To this end, TMC provides a multi-layered model consisting of DefectDetectionSensorType, SensorFunctionType and DefectReasonType.
  4. Enforce MES-integrated production orders for workcentres, including the dispatching of recipe datasets and material lists, which are constantly monitored during execution for changes and material integrity. To this end, TMC provides core constructs such as DatasetType, MaterialListType and ProductionOrderType.
  5. Enforce MES-integrated production orders for process cells, including the orderly execution of a production order among workcentres (units) connected in any non-loopy process cell layout. To this end, TMC provides the ProductionOrderOrchestrationLayerType, as well as MachineModuleProductionStateMachineType to enforce and monitor execution.
  6. Feed a companywide IIoT data stack, including pervasive, structured, high-quality data collection with aggregation directly at the data source for fast changing signals. To this end ProcessItemType is the core construct in conjunction with multiple pre-defined data points for machine, production data and events.
  7. Implement remote control loops, meaning external smart applications, e.g. AI powered, can increase the production quality by controlling remotely existing machines. To this end, TMC provides ProcessControlLoopType with the necessary watchdogs and remote alarming.
  8. Connect centralised SCADA systems above the machine HMI, including visualization and control functionality in a standardised and uniform way according to the ISA 88 physical structure model. To this end, TMC provides EquipmentModuleType, ControlModuleType with the relevant status and alarming functions.
  9. Support smart visualisation applications above the machine HMI, including visualization resources so that a smart visualisation system can programmatically build visualisation and control functions. To this end, TMC provides the UIInformationType.