Implement Services, Events, and Subscriptions

Challenges Manufacturers of factory equipment often rely on manual processes to maintain adequate supply levels of consumables in equipment at customer sites. But a clipboard-and-pen process for ordering supplies are error prone, and can quickly grow wrought with problems that often go unreported until they affect assembly line production, resulting in unexpected costs—such as overnight shipping charges—and risking downtime, which ultimately leads to customer dissatisfaction.

Solution One such manufacturer implemented ThingWorx to connect to equipment installed at customer sites, and created a custom web application using ThingWorx Foundation to remotely monitor supply levels. ThingWorx Industrial Connectivity provides the bi-directional connection to send data that is displayed in graphs on the web application created using ThingWorx Mashup Builder. Features of ThingWorx Analytics were used to generate alerts before maintenance problems affected production.

Outcomes The manufacturer is able to monitor supply levels to more effectively anticipate when consumables will need to be replenished. Supplies are now consistently ground shipped on time to meet assembly line demand, reducing interruptions to operations and allowing expansion to multiple plants with improved service level.