Railway components · heavy production
Heavy parts, long machining times and mixed small batches mean that one late job holds up the whole schedule. MDCplus shows what every machine is doing, old ones included, so you see a delay while it can still be fixed. We have done this on Indian Railways production facilities.
Machine monitoring for railway component manufacturing means collecting machine data automatically, so you can see how many hours each machine really cuts, which job is late and why machines stand. Wheels, axles, bogie frames and couplers are heavy, machining times are long and workshops often run machines of very different ages, so the value is in knowing the real state of every machine without relying on paper logs.
Real case
MDCplus real-time machine monitoring and data collection was deployed on Indian Railways production facilities in a joint project launched in September 2019. It is the kind of workshop this page is about: heavy parts, long machining times and machines of different ages.
The efficiency figure was reported in the trade press at the time. It is not the result of an independent audit.
Plan against reality
When one machine takes hours longer than planned, every job behind it is late, and with heavy parts and long cycles there is little room to catch up. Machine data shows which job is running late while the schedule can still be changed, and not when the part is already due.
Illustration, not customer data.
Four signals
A heavy wheel, axle or frame can stay on one machine for hours. A stop or a slow cycle in the middle costs a lot of machine time that cannot be bought back.
Many part types in small batches mean many setups, and setup time is easy to underestimate.
Workshops often run a modern machining center next to a lathe that is decades old. The old one usually has no data at all.
Customers and inspectors ask what ran on which machine and when. Paper logs get lost.
Old machine, new data
It runs all day. Nobody knows how many hours it really cuts, how long it waits for a crane or how often it stops. The answer is in a paper log, if anyone filled it in.
Connected through
Check your machine in the connectivity checker to see the connection route for your controller, or read how raw signals become metrics.
The ideal rollout
Tell us the machines, what you make and where jobs are late. We will answer what can be read, including from old machines, and what a sensible first step looks like.
Yes. MDCplus has been used on Indian Railways production facilities, in a joint project launched in September 2019. The case is described on this page.
Yes. Machines with a modern controller connect through it. Older machines connect through a terminal on the machine, PLC signals or additional sensors, so a machine does not have to be replaced to be monitored.
Start with the machines that hold up the most parts, usually the large lathes and milling machines. Machine states, stop reasons and real machine hours per job show where the schedule is lost. Maintenance on real run time comes next.
It records machine states over time and, with NC program management, which program ran on which machine. Through the API it can be linked to orders in ERP or MES. It supports your records and does not replace your quality management system.
Yes. MDCplus is installed on premise and can work fully inside a closed network without internet access.
The first machine is connected within 1 to 2 hours. The rest depends on how fast you provide the list of machines and the network access on the site.
MDCplus is a perpetual license per data collection point, where one PLC or HMI is one license. The price includes implementation and the server license.
Technical library
Last updated: . Prepared by the MDCplus team.
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