Using a similar approach as a USB interface, plant components can exchange data independently. The advantage is that the controlling software can identify new or modified system components quickly and easily. All the information is transferred to the production process for automated integration. The motto and method are called “plug and work”, which is based on the use of open standards already in use in today’s industry. For this reason, no additional interfaces or drivers have to be programmed or customized to the production equipment.
Taking machines or machine tools into operation is one of the most time-intensive steps, the time and cost of which are often hard to anticipate. For a modern production line, for example, the manufacturing and assembly of the individual machines can take up to six weeks. Taking the overall installation into operation may be almost as time-intensive. Depending on the project layout, this takes place on the manufacturer’s premises or on the customer’s construction site. The lion’s share of this time results from the fact that the machine manufacturer has to identify and to store the component characteristics manually in the machine control, for example ball screw pitch errors (see, for example, left side of the figure, taking the form of a pdf file or on paper owing to the data transfer). When components are integrated into a machine tool, specifications such as the slope of the ball screw drive, the bearing distances and the electrical indicators of the main spindle have to be stored in the machine control by manual efforts. Owing to this manual share, this is a time-intensive and error-prone process. To ensure the required process capability, component-specific errors have to be compensated for. For example, the geometric errors in ball screw drives are identified by means of a ballbar test and the resulting compensation values are stored in the control system. In the case of a main spindle, the shifts of the processing tool resulting from temperature-related impacts have to be identified by appropriate external measuring devices so they can be compensated for.
For example, there is a 7-digit numeral code on the screw nut to identify ball screw drives. This laser-engraved code is required to connect the ball screw drives with the start-up data of the individual components. To this end, pitch error protocols, frictional torque curves, rigidities, geometric data and even test certificates for the respective ball screw drives are necessary. This data is forwarded to the customer in various data formats and separately from the ball screw drive. The data from the test measurements at the test stands is generated in multiple data formats. This results in high manual efforts, which is driving the costs for the start-up of machine tools.
In addition, the start-up of expansion systems such as gripper systems used for work piece manipulation is still time and cost-intensive today. In this case, for example, the potential motion ranges have to be stored in the higher-level control system. In addition, the positioning accuracy is stored in the repository for high-precision positioning processes. A machine tool can be equipped with various tool magazines. When taken into operation, the number, position and condition of the individual tools has to be stored manually in the control system, which can amount to up to 100 units in the case of large magazines.
Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB 
