DASHDON 4.0

Flexible Dashboarding and Andon system: open device and multi-source connectivity

CONTEST

Hermes Dashdon is a dashboarding system for Lean Manufacturing, designed to aware operators and managers of situation in their production environments in real time, so decisions can be taken immediately.

VISUAL MANUFACTURING

Connectivity: the solution implements the most widespread industrial standards such as OPC.UA, Modbus, MQTT, REST, in both modes, as-a-client, in order to connect to the devices or partner systems, and as-a-server, in order to speak the same language as the perimeter devices, extremely useful in case of technological refresh.
Easy-access: access to application from Web, Tablet, Phone or Desktop, with extremely intuitive UI, designed following the directives of mobile applications, it is easy also for non-technicians to start to be operative quickly on this system.
Real-time: updates without slowdowns, the solution has been designed so that with each configuration operation or data received from systems and devices, the dashboards are updated without the need for any refresh, reset or polling.

TECHNOLOGIES: NET | ETCD | OPC.UA | MQTT | ANGULAR | DOCKER | DEVOPS

CHALLENGES

Two are the most important aspects for operators and managers of production plants. The first is the awareness of knowing, at all times, the situation in production and the second is to reduce the friction necessary to adapt IT systems to changes in production processes.

The solution proposes a layout engine for the real-time monitoring, as a combination of widgets (counters, gauges, texts, images and more), which can be linked with the variables, variables processed and received from Data Sources.
The customer can design and modify layouts as needed with an infinite combination of configurations.

dashdon screen
Features:

  • Data Sources: it is the part that exposes the API with which external systems can populate the data to show on the Dashboards. Designed to support multiple protocols, currently HTTPS, MQTT, OPC-UA or custom protocols could be implemented in the future.
  • Data Trasformation: takes care of transforming the incoming data (payload) into compatible data for the widgets, and store these data into Variables.
  • Variables: are data unit that contains values, stored on database.
  • Presentation Layer: it is the layout engine that renders and keeps the layouts updated, the widgets are the "blocks" that are positioned in the dashboard layout. User can edit layouts with a built-in editor.
  • Widgets: they are blocks that can be placed in layouts, are reusable entities. With the buil-in editor, properties of Widgets can be linked to Variables, when some data are received, data sources updates associated variables, when variables change, the layout are updated following a event-base pipeline.

The solution has been designed to take in consideration these factors:

  • To use protocols that are open and common, with wide community behind
  • To design an agnostic and flexible data model, with no specific semantics, to avoid get stuck on specific contexts
Dashdon system implements:
  • OPC.UA is open communication protocol, really popular among PLC manufacturers.
  • HTTP / HTTPS is an open and extremely widespread protocol, it is the basis of the internet. The system will expose URLs with which external applications can send data and with which the widget data will be updated.
  • MQTT is a lightweight, publish-subscribe network protocol that transports messages between devices, famous in Industrial IoT devices.

  • strip-0

    Hermes Reply is the Reply group company specialized in architectural and technological solutions, Application Maintenance services for Automotive & Manufacturing industry and Management Consulting services. Hermes Reply accompany the customers throughout the digital transformation process in order to support the adoption of digital enablers and achieve short-term and long term results, combining in-depth knowledge of production processes, industry 4.0 technologies, delivery skills and strategic vision.