NewsJun 14, 2018
Yaskawa Electric Corporation (head office: Kitakyushu, Fukuoka; Representative Director and President: Hiroshi Ogasawara) is pleased to announce the introduction of the YASKAWA Cockpit (“YCP”), a software tool that can collectively gather, visualize, accumulate, and analyze data by leveraging Yaskawa’s ability to collect big data that is incurred at the front lines of various manufacturing sites with servos, AC drives and robots which are globally competitive.
In aiming to “realize a new industrial automation revolution” as raised in its Vision 2025, our long-term business plan, Yaskawa proposed its new solution concept “i3-Mechatronics” in October 2017 and is taking steps to offer digital data solutions to its customers. The newly launched YCP is an integral part of this concept and will enable our customers to collect, accumulate, and centrally manage important data by connecting equipments and devices to YCP at the manufacturing site. The monitoring and diagnoses of statuses at manufacturing sites, the failure prediction, diagnoses of abnormalities in equipments, the detection of defects in product quality—Yaskawa will support advancements in its customer’s initiatives to manufacture with a solution that leverages data from the front lines of sites.
By linking YCP with high-end systems, AI technology will be used to identify the causes of issues that are arising and for analyzing defects in each process from operations data at the manufacturing site to make it possible to provide feedback to production control.
And furthermore, YCP supports a structure that customers need to be added as add-ons functions. Customers can use their own experience and expertise to customize applications and add them to YCP to build flexible solutions that meet various needs in addition to the standard functions from Yaskawa. In terms of offering schedule of YCP, Japan will be ahead of other regions.
Figure 1. Role model to use Yaskawa Cockpit
1) Data Collection and Visualization
YCP can be connected with various devices which are not limited to Yaskawa products (robots, servo drives, AC drives, etc.) at the manufacturing sites to collect and make visualization of operational data in real time. The collected data is accumulated in YCP or a higher level server that is linked with YCP to enable efficient data control.
2) Data Analysis
Analysis models with AI etc. which use an accumulated operational data can be executed in YCP. YCP also supports add-on functions that select or create additional applications which are required by customers.
3) Linkage with High-End Systems
YCP is compatible with OPC UA, the standard communications specification, and could also be linked with high-end system such as ERP (enterprise resource planning), MES (manufacturing execution systems), and big data servers.