How Fit is Your Company for the Digital Future?

The question is no longer whether you should be harnessing the enormous potential of digital for your company. It's how to digitally transform your machine park. Which leaves some people wondering: "Is a digital transformation of my production more complicated than I can handle? Do I need to convert my entire infrastructure? Is my data secure? UNITED GRINDING offers a simple and secure solution through its Digital Solutions platform. We'll show you how we make digitization possible.

Networked machines are a prerequisite for the use of digital products. Machines must be able to communicate with each other. Connectivity also encompasses the connection between humans and machines. For example, via intelligent HMIs (Human-Machine Interfaces).

Networking ultimately relies on its interfaces. Such as the OPC UA (Unified Architecture) industrial data exchange standard. It enables cross-operating system data exchange between products from different manufacturers via the machine’s Ethernet interface. The OPC UA interface lends itself to the easy and secure integration of digital products. Yet OPC UA only defines the transport and safety mechanism. The structure and semantics of the data must be defined separately. The framework for that task is laid out in the umati (Universal MAchine Technology Interface) standard. With umati, you as a customer can access standardized data from a machine tool easily and securely. You can find out more about umati at www.umati.org. 
 

We know from experience: For many concepts and solutions, the switch to a digitized machine park can devolve into a complicated mess with many dependencies. The architecture of UNITED GRINDING Digital Solutions™ was deliberately chosen to allow changeover to take place transparently and gradually. You have complete control over the data flow at all times. And all with a minimal startup investment in a platform that you can gradually expand. 

You are receiving a new machine or a machine with C.O.R.E. technology
New machines can be equipped with the Digital Solutions package by request. Our UNITED GRINDING Digital Solutions™ products come pre-installed on machines with C.O.R.E. technology. No retrofitting is required to activate the licenses.

You have an existing machine
UNITED GRINDING Retrofit makes it easy to retrofit your machine. Our Digital Solutions products can then be used without any issues. Contact  us. 

You have a third-party machine
The umati (Universal MAchine Technology Interface) global interface standard simplifies the integration of third-party machines considerably. Even if you don't have umati, there are other ways to network your machine. Contact us.Contact us   

Digitalization is about simplifying and making processes more transparent and increasing the availability of machines and production in general. So it's all about increasing productivity. Our UNITED GRINDING Digital Solutions™ support you in this process. 

Here's a concrete example of a real-life application: You're sitting at home in the evening while your production continues 24/7. A quick look at your smartphone lets you know whether a problem or interruption is on the horizon. You can notify an employee to head off the problem early on. It doesn't matter if you’re a large company or an SME – the technology can be used by everyone and runs on a smartphone app. 

Details on the production using Digital Solutions can be found here.

With UNITED GRINDING Digital Solutions™ online  access to your machine or system is always quick and secure. Remote Maintenance takes place only upon invitation by the customer, i.e. the connection to UNITED GRINDING is exclusively established at your initiation.

• Each connection is established directly and exclusively between you and UNITED GRINDING, and only for a limited period
• An exchange only takes place on your initiative and in any case always on precisely defined machines and/or certain functions
• Users are identified by personal user names and specific passwords

One thing is clear. Digitalization is not an end in itself. But companies can clarify many questions with a digitized machine park: Where is the product in the production process? How can waiting and changeover times be optimized in the production process? How can the consumption of electricity be reduced? All of these questions determine whether a manufacturing company has a competitive advantage or not. UNITED GRINDING Digital Solutions™ help you visualize your production, minimize machine downtime and increase profitability.