Introduction

In this example we will set up a batch job monitoring system using the equipment model approach in Engineering UI. We will create a simple cookie production line and show the whole process from start to finish within the next few parts.

The goal of this tutorial is to build a traceable monitored system, where sensors measure e.g. Raw material quantity, price per ingredient, machinery temperatures, production time and total amounts produced. For this purpose we have created a Cookie production line with four devices: Mixer, dispenser(s), oven and packager.

Manufacturing Process

In our example one cookie production batch takes 36 minutes to finish and produces 72 bags of cookies, each bag containing 36 cookies. The dispensers measure and dose the raw materials to mixer where our cookie dough is mixed. After this, the ready-made dough will be dosed to cooking trays and moved to the oven to bake. From there the baked cookies are transferred to the packaging machine and packed into sales batches. Each sales batch has a unique batch Id and pallet Id.

Separating batches

We can separate each sales batch by enabling "batch job" in our application calculation. This allows us to monitor chosen property value changes. To separate batches, we use a unique cookie batch identifier. History values will be stored for each batch.

Equipment model

Before starting configurations in Engineering UI we plan what kind of Equipment Model we need. First, we will create one Equipment class called Production Line 1 (we use numbering here for multiple production line purposes), which will be our base class for this example. For this we will create one instance called Chocolate Cookie Line 1. Then we create four other classes called Mixer, Oven, Packager and Dispenser. These are not directly derived from our Production Line 1 and will not have any shared properties. Mixer, Oven and Packager will each have one instance with same name as the class is.

To tie our classes together, we will create Mixer, Oven and Packager as reference properties to our Production Line 1 class. For Reference Target of each property we will mark the path of each class name (this will be shown in the tables below). By doing this, we are able to access the instances and properties of each model through our base model instance Chocolate Cookie Line 1.

Dispenser is an abstract class responsible for measuring raw material amounts to Mixer. Our Dispenser will have six instances matching our raw material and dough dispensers and these will be accessed through Mixer class. This is to tie together our Mixer and Dispensers within.

All Equipment model definitions and properties are shown in the tables below.

Model Hierarchy

Production Line 1
├── Chocolate Cookie Line 1
│   ├── Mixer
│   ├── Oven
│   └── Packager
└── Dispenser

Model definitions

Model properties

After defining the model hierarchy, we will create properties and define their attributes.

Production Line 1

Mixer

Dispenser

Oven

Packager

Equipment instances

Instance hierarchy

Demo Factory
└── Chocolate Cookie Line 1
    ├── Mixer
    │   ├── Butter
    │   ├── Sugar
    │   ├── Egg
    │   ├── Flour
    │   ├── Chocolate
    │   └── Dough
    ├── Oven
    └── Packager
 

As the instance hierarchy shows, raw materials are Dispenser instances that are being derived to Mixer. The properties of these instances may be accessed through Mixer path. See table below.

Instance paths

Property values

Below is a list of the property values for all the equipment instances. Historized properties with changing values are marked as "-".

Chocolate Cookie Line 1

Butter

Sugar

Egg

Flour

Chocolate

Dough

Mixer

Oven

Packager