Wireless Mesh For Large Enterprise and Manufacturing
| The plant floor is one place that is ripe for wireless M2M (machine-to-machine) applications and Dongfeng Honda Engine Co. Ltd. (DHEC) is deploying Strix Access/One OWS and IWS in several DHEC plants,including Honda’s main automobile engine factory, the engine assembly facility, and the automobile casting plant to provide strategic,facilities-wide wireless access throughout eight plants in Guangzhou, China. |  |
DHEC is a joint venture of Dongfeng Motor Corp., www.dfmc.com.cn, Wuhan, China, and Honda Motor Co. Ltd., www.honda.com, Tokyo, Japan. DHEC is responsible for the development, manufacture, and sale of car engines and transmissions and their parts; it also provides after services. These products are mainly used in the Accord, FIT Saloon, and Odyssey car series made by Guangzhou Honda. DHEC also supplies engines to Guangzhou Honda Automobile and Dongfeng Honda Automobile. The company’s yearly manufacturing capacity is 360,000 engines and over 480,000 sets of spare parts.
The previous wired infrastructure limited users’ ability to access this information in a timely manner. To resolve the issue DHEC looked at wiring the facilities, however it was determined expensive, time consuming, would impact the 24x7 operation and would be difficult to install. Also, if and when the manufacturing plant changes its design, wiring would need to be re-routed or re-installed. Using Strix products, DHEC benefits from secure, high-performance, enterprise-class wireless network infrastructure for plant workers, managers, executives enabling fast and cost-effective deployments. The solution was a combination of Strix IWS inside and OWS outside the facilities creates a seamless mesh throughout and across all locations, thus enabling process monitoring, stock control, and components tracking.
Strix Gold partner eSolutions Tech Co., Ltd., provided the software and hardware that enables manufacturing and operations automation over DHEC’s Strix Access/One mesh network. eSolutions’ system enables stationary and mobile connectivity with the ability to track DHEC’s automobile product quality information system and implements enterprise resource planning (ERP), a manufacturing execution system (MES), a warehouse management system (WMS), service logical circuit plan systems, bar code and data acquisition systems, the wireless network system, and the axle bush select and matching system.
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The Oracle-based process control and data collection system developed by eSolution is a critical component requiring "real-time" communication. Strix products were the only products found, out of many evaluated, that could connect the ERP and the process control systems and enable the exchange of data collected from fixed or mobil data terminals in |
manufacturing plants with the required performance, resilience and reliability. This new installation provides access to critical supply, manufacturing, and operations information.
The wireless real-time control systems enabled by Strix Access/One enhance automated manufacturing and quality control and help reduce manpower costs by increasing people’s ability to resolve problems that may occur. Where previously an individual would have to sit at a terminal to monitor certain processes, now he or she can look at live networked data and video information from the floor. This ability also reduces the response time for resolving problems.
“The real-time business intelligence system we’ve developed for Dongfeng Honda takes threshold-based logic and applies it to process control systems and more. Strix IWS and OWS are critical components in the manufacturing, assembling, automation, and monitoring processes. We commend Strix because its products are a benchmark of wireless network performance and reliability for this industry.” said Alvin Ma, Vice President of Business Development, eSolutions Tech.
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