MTConnect
Encyclopedia
| MTConnect |
MTConnect is a manufacturing industry standard to facilitate the organized retrieval of process information from numerically controlled
Numerical control
Numerical control refers to the automation of machine tools that are operated by abstractly programmed commands encoded on a storage medium, as opposed to controlled manually via handwheels or levers, or mechanically automated via cams alone...
machine tool
Machine tool
A machine tool is a machine, typically powered other than by human muscle , used to make manufactured parts in various ways that include cutting or certain other kinds of deformation...
s. The initiative began as a result of lectures given by David Edstrom of Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
and Dr. David Patterson, Professor of Computer Science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
(UCB) at the 2006 annual meeting of the Association for Manufacturing Technology
Association for Manufacturing Technology
The Association for Manufacturing Technology is a trade association based in McLean, Virginia in the United States founded as the National Machine Tool Builders Association in 1902...
(AMT) membership. The two lectures, “How the Internet’s Participation Age Will Drive Dramatic Changes in the Machine Tool Industry” & “Creating A Thriving American Manufacturing Base In The 21st Century America” described the need for an open communication standard to enable Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
connectivity to manufacturing equipment. Initial development of the standard was carried out by a joint effort between the UCB Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences (EECS) department, the UCB Mechanical Engineering (ME) department (both in the College of Engineering) and the Georgia Institute of Technology
Georgia Institute of Technology
The Georgia Institute of Technology is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States...
, using input from industry representatives. The resulting standard is available under royalty-free licensing terms.
Description
MTConnect is a lightweight, open, and extensible protocol designed for the exchange of data between shop floor equipment and software applications used for monitoring and data analysis. In its current form, MTConnect is referred to as a read-onlyRead-only
In computing, read-only can mean:* Read-only memory , a type of storage media* Read-only access to files or directories in file system permissions...
standard, meaning that it only defines the extraction (reading) of data from control devices, not the writing of data to a control device. Freely available, open standards are used for all aspects of MTConnect. Data from shop floor devices is presented in XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
format, and is retrieved from information providers, called Agents, using Hypertext Transfer Protocol
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a networking protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web....
(HTTP) as the underlying transport protocol
Communications protocol
A communications protocol is a system of digital message formats and rules for exchanging those messages in or between computing systems and in telecommunications...
. MTConnect provides a REST
Rest
Rest may refer to:* Leisure* Human relaxation* SleepRest may also refer to:* Rest , a pause in a piece of music* Rest , the relation between two observers* Rest , a 2008 album by Gregor Samsa...
ful interface, which means the interface is stateless. No session
Session (computer science)
In computer science, in particular networking, a session is a semi-permanent interactive information interchange, also known as a dialogue, a conversation or a meeting, between two or more communicating devices, or between a computer and user . A session is set up or established at a certain point...
must be established to retrieve data from an MTConnect Agent, and no logon or logoff sequence is required (unless overlying security protocols are added which do). Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is an application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol network...
(LDAP) is recommended for discovery services.
Version 1.0 was released in December 2008.
The first public demonstration of MTConnect occurred at the International Manufacturing Technology Show
International Manufacturing Technology Show
The International Manufacturing Technology Show , first held in Cleveland, Ohio in 1927., is a trade show that features industrial machinery and technology. It is the largest manufacturing technology trade show in North America....
(IMTS) held in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois September 2008. There, 25 industrial equipment manufacturers networked their machinery control systems, providing process information that could be retrieved from any web-enabled client
Client (computing)
A client is an application or system that accesses a service made available by a server. The server is often on another computer system, in which case the client accesses the service by way of a network....
connected to the network.
Subsequent demonstrations occurred at EMO
EMO (trade show)
The Exposition Mondiale de la Machine Outil , or “EMO” is a bi-annual European trade show for the metal working industry...
(The European International Machine Tool Show) in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, Italy in October 2009, and the 2010 IMTS in Chicago.
Standard
The MTConnect standard is separated in three sections. The first section provides information on the protocol and structure of the XML documents via XML schemaXML schema
An XML schema is a description of a type of XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by XML itself...
s. The second section specifies the machine tool components and the description of the available data. The third and last section specifies the organization of the data streams that can be provided from a manufacturing device. The MTConnect Institute is considering adding a fourth section to support mobile assets that include tools and work-holdings.
MTConnect has taken an incremental approach to defining the requirements for manufacturing device communications. It does not set forth to exhaustively define every possible piece of data an application can collect from a manufacturing device, but it works forward from business and research objectives to define the required elements to meet those needs. Currently the standard has catalogued the most important components and data items for metal cutting devices. MTConnect provides an extensible XML schema to allow implementors to add custom data to meet their specific needs, while providing as much commonality as possible.
Future
On September 16, 2010, The MTConnect Institute and the OPC FoundationOPC Foundation
The Object Linking and Embedding for Process Control Foundation is an industry consortium that creates and maintains standards for open connectivity of industrial automation devices and systems, such as industrial control systems and process control generally...
announced a cooperation to ensure interoperability and consistency between the standards maintained by the respective organizations.
External links
- Agenda, AMT’s 2006 Annual Meeting “Manufacturing in the Internet Age”
- MTConnect - What is it? (introduction with information videos)
- MTConnect Institute Home Page
- Modern Machine Shop magazine article 'MTConnect Is For Real'
- Control Design magazine article: MTConnect Standardizes Data, Lets Machines and Users Talk Same Language
- MTConnect Demo Web Application