With a connected booth concept, AXOOM, MAPAL, SICK and TRUMPF showcase the intelligent manufacture of customized individual products

Hanover/Karlsruhe, in May 2016 - With a connected showcase extending across several exhibition booths, the digital business platform AXOOM and its numerous partners are demonstrating how Industry 4.0 functions in exhibition format. At the same time the application makes it clear how AXOOM itself works – namely, as a powerful link between all participants in the production value chain.

It all begins in Hall 08, at the AXOOM booth D09, where an individual sales order is created: batch size one, typical of today's production requirements.
For traceability purposes it is given a tag – a kind of virtual label – and is then fed into order preparation. The next stop is a UNIBASE M tool cabinet by AXOOM partner MAPAL. It represents materials storage and is far more than just a cabinet: it provides information constantly in AXOOM on its status and capacity level.

Once the material – in this case, a pen – has been removed, this is followed by intralogistics, taken care of by the prospects themselves. They will bring the workpiece from the AXOOM booth to one of two production sites: the High Tech Forum Autonomous Systems booth (Hall 2, Booth B01) or SICK booth (Hall 8, Booth D36). The tags, together with the corresponding RFID readers from SICK, enable display of the workpiece's position on monitors, making the status and location of the workpiece transparent in AXOOM at all times.

A TruMark laser from TRUMPF is located at the SICK company booth as a production station for individualized products. The same applies to the High Tech Forum Autonomous Systems, which also serves as an “outsourced production facility” with the help of a marking laser. The laser marks the pen with the personalized text that was ordered during job input at the AXOOM booth earlier on. Integrated AXOOM partner Xetics, an MES specialist, then distributes the order to production. Once the product has been completed, the same route is used to provide feedback via Cloud to AXOOM. If the visitor now returns to the AXOOM booth he will find the job ready for dispatch there, and can finalize his order.

AXOOM covers the entire value chain, from order acquisition through to completion. Here, the status of the production equipment is always transparent, and a workpiece's position can be located at any time. The partners' technologies are all connected continuously via AXOOM and, as a result, can be centrally recorded, evaluated, and controlled. Components like storage can be integrated with the help of the AXOOM Factory Gate, for example. Powered by C-Labs, it is a high-security communications module for those using the AXOOM Cloud.

In summary, the showcase is a fully-functioning metaphor for real-life applications in production plants. It shows that AXOOM, together with the core competencies of different partners, is succeeding in digitally mapping out the entire production hall and addressing all of the processes involved.
The various competencies all complement each other – and deliver total solutions within an autonomous system.