Monitoring and management of machines with wireless PDAs in wireless networked facilities

Effective information exchange is essential for successful operation of the highly automated manufacturing and maintenance facilities. Microcontrollers and microcomputers have been widely used in these facilities for control and diagnostics of thousands of machines, vehicles and products. Generally, each of these systems collects sensory data, locally analyzes it, takes necessary actions, displays their status and informs a central system briefly. Use of networks and communications with operators by using the wireless personal digital assistants (PDA) and tablet PC is proposed in this paper. Fast networks and powerful central computers allow the analysis of data at central computers by using much more sophisticated procedures and may save extensive information about the operations. Operators are able to receive detailed information and control any machine in the facility with their PDA and tablet computers. The current study is concentrated on wireless PDA. Web page and databased information exchange with PDA is implemented and observations are reported.