Piovan updates supervision software in line with Industry 4.0

Piovan has launched a new verison of its supervision software in line with the ‘smart factory’ concept of Industry 4.0.

The new version of the company’s ‘Winfactory’ process control and management software, which it first launched in 2008, has evolved to enable communication between various parts of a technology system that brings benefits such as energy and cost savings.

Winfactory 4.0 uses OPC - UA (Open Platform Communication - Unified Architecture), which Piovan says makes it possible to supervise and enable dialogue between Piovan machines and machines of other manufacturers (OEM).

There is no longer the need for an interface that “translates” the data provided by each device into a common format, the company says, as the information exchange becomes immediate and the various systems can interact independently.

Additionally, a similar communication platform allows users to access and use of the software on tablets and smartphones.

Advanced management of energy use

In parallel with the development of Winfactory 4.0, Piovan has also created a group of integrated functions that enable the control of operative parameters used to manage energy sources within a factory.

These include knowing how and why energy is used for each individual process based on production volumes, as well as calculating efficiency levels.

The data volumes necessary to identify the KPI and best practices to adopt to optimise energy consumption can be collected quickly from factories that are far away from one another.

This is the Big Data collection and analysis concept, which Piovan says it has made sector-specific to meet the needs of its clients.