How to Standardize Machine Data Across Multiple Manufacturing Plants
You acquire a second plant. The first plant runs Allen-Bradley PLCs with Ethernet/IP. The new plant has Siemens S7-1500s on PROFINET and a handful of legacy Mitsubishi FX units on Modbus RTU. Both plants make the same products on similar (but not identical) equipment.
Now the VP of Operations asks a simple question: "What's our OEE across both plants?"
And you realize you can't answer it. Not because the data doesn't exist, but because "Motor Temperature" in Plant A is tag N7:15 in degrees Fahrenheit, polled every 2 seconds, while the equivalent reading in Plant B is DB10.DBD4 in degrees Celsius, polled every 10 seconds. They're measuring the same thing, but the data is completely incompatible.
This is the machine data standardization problem, and it kills multi-plant visibility for manufacturers every day.