Industrial automation using embedded systems and machine-to-machine, man-to-machine (M2M) connectivity for improved overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)

Embedded systems in general and microcontrollers in particular are playing a key role in today's industrial automation and remote monitoring era for enhanced productivity and reduced costs. The aim of this paper is to report research at e-Monitoring and e-Management Research Centre (eM
²
RC) at College of E&ME (NUST) on distributed e-Monitoring and e-Management (eM
²
) using Man-to-Machine, Machine-to Machine (M2M) connectivity for industrial automation. The reported system has successfully been developed, tested and implemented in the local Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) industry to improve Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) resulting in an increased overall system efficiency. The research is based on a combination of hardware and software logic in which the hardware implementation emphasizes the role of embedded systems and M2M connectivity for e-Monitoring and e-Management applications. The e-Information is sent to central server and related technicians/managers/executives for immediate decision making to reduce downtimes and improve quality.