Automated production with no downtime: New octoplant feature enables quick overview of all assets and equipment

Landau in the Palatinate (Germany), Alpharetta, Georgia (USA), Nanjing (China), 09th of August 2023 – With the current octoplant software version, AUVESY-MDT has the right answer to error-proneness in complex production processes. The enormous number of assets, mostly from different manufacturers, is a major challenge in automated production. The resulting complexity on the shopfloor increases downtime risk and intensive manual asset management efforts. AUVESY-MDT’s new asset inventory feature, now released as a beta version, provides relief against just these kinds of challenges and efforts.

An up-to-date list of all physical assets involved in automated production processes is the key to avoiding downtime. With asset inventory at the push of a button and holistic transparency, companies move away from reactive maintenance to preventive hardware replacement and firmware updates.

Clever shopfloor management
The higher the level of automation in production processes, the more complex the coordination, meaning more manual process management efforts. Different employees monitor individual modules at different times, replace them, change them or shut them down. If production environments are distributed across locations worldwide, it is simply impossible to maintain an overview without the appropriate technological support. The versioning and back-up tool octoplant has been delivering market-leading solutions to these challenges for years.

Transparency over assets and factories worldwide
octoplant's asset inventory brings a host of new features enabling simplification, overviews, and time and cost savings in shopfloor management. Up-to-date digital lists can be created at the touch of a button - because with the large number of assets involved in automated processes, a manually recorded list never provides the current status. The clear dashboard shows which manufacturer device types and models are in use, for which there is a regulated backup process, and which firmware version is on individual components, keeping them both current and compatible.

The feature also creates the basis for risk assessment by comparing inventory with public CVE databases for security vulnerabilities, checking the condition of devices and systems, and determining when obsolete hardware and devices need to be replaced. All responsible parties have access to all device information, regardless of location. "Asset Inventory" from octoplant thus becomes a reliable and holistic control center for all involved entities – from the maintenance department to management.