Innovation is part of day-to-day life at Dynamic Air in Nazaré Paulista, São Paulo. Founded in 1969 in the United States, the company is recognized as the world leader in dense phase pneumatic conveying systems for bulk solids handling. With more than 15,000 systems installed worldwide – each one purpose-built to achieve maximum performance – Dynamic Air provides customers across a myriad of industries with solutions for transport, homogenization, mixing, weighing, dosing, storage, receiving/unloading and drying.
Dynamic Air is also recognized as a thought-leader in manufacturing because they operate Latin America’s largest and most modern pilot plant. The plant is used to simulate process conditions and perform testing on an industrial scale.
The Application: Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
Dynamic Air's mission has always been to stay one step ahead of customer needs. To support this aim, the company makes ongoing investments in new solutions designed to improve the lives of their customers.
The latest project was led by Patrícia Fernandes, General Manager of Dynamic Air, and supported by both the Automation Engineering Department and Information Technology Department. The goal? Help customers monitor their Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) in real-time.
An accurate, real-time OEE value is notoriously difficult to obtain, as it’s a calculation made from data that’s generated and stored in disparate systems: quality, performance and availability. OEE can only be calculated by aggregating these data and performing the specific OEE calculation that best fits the company’s needs.
Real-time OEE is an incredibly powerful metric. Understanding real-time OEE makes it possible to identify issues, minimize waste and increase productivity.
But that’s not all…
With COVID-19 changing the way we all do business, Dynamic Air also saw this project as an opportunity to create an ongoing service relationship with customers. “We wanted to innovate in the face of the pandemic. We knew that by leveraging remote access, we could be nimble with how we provided service, continue to deliver to our quality standards, and help our customers improve their operations,” said Fernandes.
The Journey: Selecting a Vendor
According to Claudio Ferreira, Automation Engineering Manager at Dynamic Air, the company investigated a variety of options and spent nearly two years researching products and suppliers. “We concluded that we needed a partner that had experience with the digital journey, software with adequate data security, and a brand name that our market trusted. Additionally, we wanted future-proof software that would allow us to add augmented reality, machine learning and other new technologies.”
Dynamic Air determined that they wanted the ThingWorx IIoT Platform – which connects disparate devices, applications and data streams to enable secure access to industrial operations data.
“Rockwell Automation has been a Dynamic Air partner for a few years, and we've always had a lot of support in our projects,” says Mariana Oliveira, Automation Engineering Coordinator. “Rockwell Automation is the largest automation company in the world, has know-how in the digital journey, values data security in all software, and is at the forefront of technological innovations through their partnership with PTC. They had the solution we needed, and they had our trust.”
The Solution: TED-D
The acronym TED-D stands for Technology Embedded Data – Dynamic Air. Built on the ThingWorx IIoT Platform, TED-D increases the volume and quality of information available to operators and plant managers by aggregating and contextualizing data from PLCs, edge devices, servers and the cloud.
“Through a monthly subscription, TED-D becomes our ongoing connection with the customer. The dashboard provides the customer with real-time OEE information so they can continue to refine their operations.” says Ferreira.
“We now have the data needed to improve our service offerings.” says Oliveria. “We can remotely execute performance evaluations, run parameter verifications, automatically collect data on startup, and even virtually access program logic. And our After-Sales and Spare Parts businesses can gain an understanding of upcoming service and spare parts needs.”
The Result: Enabling Industry 4.0
Customers are noticing. TED-D recently helped Dynamic Air win an order for a pneumatic conveying system. “Our goal is to support our customers with their digital transformation journeys and help them succeed in Industry 4.0,” concludes Fernandes. We at Rockwell Automation would say that they’re off to a great start.
