OnRobot, a maker of end-of-arm tools for industrial robots, is making its software debut with the launch of WebLytics, which the company describes as “a unique production monitoring, device diagnostics, and data analytics solution designed to enhance productivity and minimize downtime”.
Capable of monitoring the performance of multiple collaborative applications simultaneously and in real-time, WebLytics gathers equipment data from both robots and tools and transforms it into easy-to-understand, visualized device and application-level intelligence.
Enrico Krog Iversen, CEO of OnRobot, says: “The launch of WebLytics is an important landmark for OnRobot, our customers, and our global integrator network.
“WebLytics is the first software solution to provide real-time, application-focused data for collaborative applications across major robot brands.
“As our first software product, WebLytics marks the beginning of OnRobot’s journey into robot software and completes our vision of providing a One Stop Shop for collaborative applications on both the hardware and software side.”
For end users and integrators, WebLytics not only eliminates manual data collection – it provides actionable insights into how well a collaborative application is performing, offering live device diagnostics, alerts and preventive maintenance measures to keep costly robot cell downtime to a minimum.
Integrating the globally recognized overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) industry standard, WebLytics identifies trends in real-time in the robot cell, including patterns, peaks, and disturbances in application productivity.
OEE measures the percentage of manufacturing time that is truly productive – a score of 100 percent indicates that the collaborative application is producing only good parts, as fast as possible, and with no downtime.
Leveraging these OEE measures, WebLytics can determine whether the manufacturing process is running at optimal speed and can monitor and analyze the quality of application cycles – key insights for manufacturers of all sizes.
WebLytics can report on utilization of the robot arm and OnRobot tools such as grippers, vision cameras, and sensors, as well as the number of safety stops initiated, and the number of grip cycles performed while an application is running.
When changes are made to a robot cell, such as adjusting the speed of a robot or the settings on a gripper, WebLytics can also automatically report on the impact of those changes on application performance.
If anomalies occur in the collaborative application after deployment, WebLytics enables users to analyze the data collected directly from the robot(s) and tools and report on its findings using customizable dashboards.
Laszlo Papp, product manager and sales engineer at Wamatec Hungary, tested WebLytics on machine tending, pick and place, and palletizing applications.
Papp says: “In this fast-paced world, time is everything. When cycle time is really important, WebLytics helps you identify the small mistakes that cause time wastage.
“WebLytics can also save a lot of time for yourself and for your production line by making it easy to schedule all maintenance and product changes. My favorite function was the dashboard.
“I really liked how WebLytics allowed me to monitor all my applications, my cobots/robots, and my end-of-arm-tools using one platform that provides real time monitoring, data collection and line charting. WebLytics makes optimizing all applications much easier than before.”
WebLytics retains the ease-of-use, affordability, application focus and accessibility that defines every OnRobot product.
Compatible with all leading collaborative robot and lightweight industrial robot arms and with all OnRobot tools, WebLytics is readily expandable, futureproofing it as new robots and tools become available.
Access to WebLytics’ is provided through a secure, intuitive browser-based user interface, that displays OEE measures and user-defined KPIs through customizable dashboards that provide an immediate and transparent view into real-time and historical application performance.
The WebLytics server can be deployed on a shop floor’s local network or added to a virtual network that connects to the robot cell. Collected data is stored locally on the WebLytics server.
Meanwhile, WebLytics’ built-in web server is always accessible from the shop floor network or from anywhere in the world via secure HTTPS connection.
WebLytics is not just a powerful tool for end users; it also creates new revenue opportunities for system integrators, by providing the software required to offer their customers data-backed custom service agreements and engineering services for cell optimization.
Iversen says: “WebLytics is the perfect addition to our existing product lines and a natural progression of the OnRobot tradition of making advanced tools and technologies – in this case remote monitoring, device diagnostics and data analytics – affordable and accessible to companies of all sizes.”
