Interactive Lab Assistant: ERP Lab for Smart Factories

The experiment manual is in the form of an Interactive Lab Assistant course. This multimedia course guides the user step-by-step through the subject of Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP. The fundamentals are imparted with the aid of easily understandable graphics. The Interactive Lab Assistant teams up with a question section to provide a very comprehensive experimenting environment.

Special features:

• Interactive experiment set-up
• Save measurement values and graphics in the experiment manual per drag and drop
• Monitor learning progress using questions with feedback and evaluation logic
• Print document function for easy printing of experiment manual including solutions
• Labsoft browser and course software

Training contents:

• Smart factory
• ERP lab
• Configuration
• Project – transport system integration into ERP lab
• Project – configuration of an assembly line
• Development of the ERP lab
• Course duration: approx. 60 h

The ERP lab is an educationally designed ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. Contrary to the ERP systems found in industrial solutions, here there is no need for prolonged periods of familiarization. The student can focus immediately on the essential tasks of ERP system programming and set-up. The corresponding course software describes how the ERP system works and assists the student in programming and setting up the system. Explanations to questions like 'What is an ERP system?', 'How does an ERP system work?' or 'How does communication with an IoT device function?' are included in the course. The student concentrates on operations involving the manufacturing process, the configuration of the ERP system and programming the programmable logic control units. In block production, 2 different products can be manufactured in 12 different variants. In car production, there are well over 50,000 variants to choose from . These are saved in the ERP’s database. Thanks to the built-in pricing model, the ERP lab also serves as a merchandise management system.

The ERP lab also serves as an MES (Manufacturing Execution System) system and monitors the entire process. It runs on a server and provides all production-relevant data in the “Edge-Cloud“ (a cloud in the intranet); from orders coming from the webshop to the production process sequence up to and including warehouse management and monitoring, the ERP lab performs all of these jobs. Using the network, the ERP system communicates with the programmable logic control units of the manufacturing system.

After replenishment, the magazine inventory statuses of the processing stations are manually set in the ERP lab. Once processing is complete, i.e. after a portion of the magazine has been used up, the inventory level of the magazine is automatically updated by the ERP lab. A fully automatic update of the inventory level is performed via additional IO link sensors integrated into the magazines, also after the magazines have been filled up.

Without any complications, the ERP lab can be adapted to the hardware. If the production line is reconfigured, the ERP lab can be correspondingly adapted with just a few simple modifications. All of the necessary steps are clearly laid out in the course.

Customers can submit orders by means of the webshop, which runs on the server. It can be accessed from any mobile device, such as tablet computers, smart phones or laptops, requiring nothing more than a web browser. Customers can make their order using the shop and are immediately informed of the total costs of the items in their shopping basket. Prices for individual product components are managed by the ERP system. By means of the itemised prices stored in the system, it is possible to establish and assess production and material costs. It is also possible to make detailed analysis and to export data.

Delivery receipts and invoices can be printed out for each customer order. The ERP lab monitors the entire production process within a company. SCADA functionality provides maintenance staff with fault notifications should any problems arise in the production process and pinpoints where they have occurred. Monitoring of the warehouse inventory is used to notify whether existing orders can be met or not. An automated ordering procedure can also be triggered when stocks are too low.

The transport systems with integrated control monitor and perform internal current and voltage measurement. This means that all the power consumed by the individual systems can be recorded. The ERP lab assesses this data and displays the energy footprint or balance of the individual orders.

The ERP lab can also be configured as desired. New processing stations, new components needing processing, products and variants can be added and configured. The ERP lab is thus universally deployable and is also capable of controlling several assembly lines simultaneously. Various products are then produced on different assembly lines. The ordering of all products is carried out via a webshop. Each newly defined product can be configured for the webshop and is then made available in the webshop for online shopping. The ERP lab then commences production in the appropriate assembly line.

ERP-LAB features:

• ERP and MES
• SCADA
• Operating data acquisition (ODA)
• Machine data acquisition (MDA)
• Production and manufacture planning
• Freely configurable
• Energy footprints of productions
• Cloud-based data exchange
• Warehousing management
• Intelligent control of production in real time
• Monitoring of production in real time
• Network communication
• Parallel control of several assembly lines
• Server with ERP system
• Communication between the ERP lab and the control unit
• Customised adaptation of the ERP system to the hardware
• Merchandise management system
• Customised product pricing
• Print function for delivery receipts and invoices
• Large statistical capacity for
  • Number of workpieces used
  • Number of manufactured products
  • Production costs
  • Country overview, i.e. how many products delivered where
  • and much more besides

Integrated webshop:

• Freely configurable webshop
• Ordering via Internet
• Personalised ordering
• Itemised pricing for different variants
• Display of delivery times
• Live view of production process
• Live view of order lists

Description of interfaces:

• OPC UA: Protocol for communication between control unit and ERP lab
• MQTT: PubSup service used to automatically update data on the user interface
• REST: Makes data available in machine-readable form

The data of the ERP systems is found in a MySQL database which can easily be accessed using a pre-installed user interface. All data can be exported in a variety of formats (e.g. Excel lists).

System requirements:

• Personal computer with operating system Windows 10/11, .NET Redistributable 3.5 and DirectX 9.0c
• STEP7 Basic (included in the STEP7 trainer package)
• CD-ROM drive for installing the software
• USB port for server dongle
• Ethernet port or second USB port for USB Ethernet adapter
• at least 60 GB free hard disk space
• 16 GB RAM (min. 8 GB)
• modern CPU, with at least 2.7 G Hz clock frequency
• virtualbox