Monitoring of a Veneer Lathe Knife by the use of an Industrial Internet of Things- Platform

Abstract: The number of devices connected to the Internet grows constantly. This information entity has been labeled the Internet of Things (IoT). One important aspect of this is the industrial applications, sometimes labeled the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Collecting and analyzing the massive amounts of data that industry generates will only become more and more important as technology and the need for efficiency increase. Novotek is a company with long and extensive experience of industrial IT and automation. Together with their customer Quant Service they are launching a project for predictive maintenance. This aims to monitor several different industrial sites using an industrial platform and the IIoT framework. The monitoring will allow for tracking of machine status and maintenance needs from both near and afar. One of the sites for this project is a veneer production line for composite wood products. As a part of the monitoring and predictive maintenance project, this report looks at the possibility of using the ThingWorx IIoT platform’s analytics functionality to determine the need for maintenance of the cutting knife on a veneer lathe. The goal is to look at its uses for monitoring and predictive maintenance for this particular case but also as a general method. The process for this will be twofold. Since the project uses the IIoT framework one part is how to collect the data from the site and then passing it through the platform and to the analytics program. The second part is the machine learning and statistical methods and algorithms used to analyze the data for predictions. For benchmarking, it will be compared to another analytics product. The results of the project are not conclusive concerning the knife predictions. Development of the measurement setup is needed. The IIoT platform does however show potential in being used for the intended purpose.