Digital Factory Integration:

Data Enrichment at the Edge

In Partnership With:

Mazak Corporation
System Insights
Cisco

Machine tool builder Mazak Corporation and IT leader Cisco Systems Inc. achieved a significant leap forward in full factory digital integration as well as easy and secure entrance into the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) with the development of the Mazak Mazak SmartBox. As a launch platform, it allows manufacturers to access and use real-time manufacturing data to improve overall productivity and agility along with responsiveness to customer and market changes.

Data drives full digital factory integration. And within that integration exists an area or region known as the “edge” — the boundary between what is considered the physical piece of equipment, the data source and the rest of the networking world. The edge is essentially the IIoT gateway, so the closer to the gateway that data can be processed or enriched, the better.

Enrichment close to the edge reduces the complexity of the source’s data stream, or its “digital exhaust,” and simplifies it into a form that other applications can understand and utilize. Actual enrichment is the classification and identification of data in terms of what is happening in a process and who is doing it. In the case of manufacturing, enrichment entails information such as when a machine was making a part, who was operating the machine, what was happening while the part was being made and, if the machine stopped, why.