iTAC exhibited at the HANNOVER MESSE fair at a joint stand with Smart Electronic Factory e.V., and it was also represented at the SmartFactory KL stand. Both of these initiatives use the iTAC.MES.Suite as the technological core of their smart systems, because the cloud-capable manufacturing exe-cution system (MES) is the data hub, and therefore a key technology, in smart factories.
This - and communication technologies - are the basis on which iTAC devel-ops end-to-end solutions for the digitalisation and networking of machines and equipment. The company focuses on integrated solutions for manufacturing processes and for many years now it has been one of the pioneers in this field. For example, back in 2007 iTAC was one of the first MES manufacturers to use the OPC UA M2M communication protocol, and in 2010 it introduced the cloud-based MES as the basis for present-day IoT platforms in smart factories.
From isolated to integrated processes
“The market is currently getting ready for IoT platforms in smart factories. The big players are offering machine learning-as-a-service on their cloud platforms with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, IBM BlueMix and Microsoft Azure. Although they take very different approaches, their IoT platforms all need a cloud-capable MES to provide the business logic for batch production 1,” explained Dieter Meuser, CTO of iTAC Software AG.
iTAC also demonstrated how smart factory production processes can be converged with intelligent data processing and big data analytics at HANNOVER MESSE. “Our approach is to map different functions on one platform, from database infrastructure, through business intelligence and enter-prise manufacturing intelligence to APS, MES and many more. Networked factories can’t be operated on the basis of stand-alone solutions. Integration is the key to opening up the Internet of Things,” said Dieter Meuser.
