Research And Development Of The Andon Monitoring System In Engine Production Line

With the rapid development of China’s automobile industry, the automotive market isunprecedented prosperity, and become increasingly competitive. In order to keep thecompetitiveness of enterprises， the enterprises not only introduces advanced production,management concepts and methods，but also improves product quality and yield maximally toreduce production costs. Only in this way can it be an invincible position in the market.At present, the real-time data acquisition, data analysis and evaluation system of amajority of automotive engine assembly line are monopolized by the Swedish ABB, andSIEMENS AG, Germany monopoly. These systems are not only expensive, but also not applyto the actual situation of Chinese enterprises. Andon system is a tailor-made system for theother, and according to business needs. In actual inspection, we found that, it will not benefitthe enterprise management in accordance with the inherent mode of production, combiningrote and standardized monitoring software. Therefore, it is necessary to develop one engineproduction line monitoring system which has our own intellectual property. Andon system hasbecome an indispensable part of automobile production line as our new car factory in astandard configuration, and has been widely applied for stamping, welding, painting andassembly process in engine workshop and assembly workshop.In this paper the design and implementation of this project is achieved on the basis ofcaterpillar, according to the requirement of customer. Andon system is a flexible systemwhich can be controlled and managed automatically. The system is designed very practically,can meet customer’s demand and facilitate the users. The exchange of data between thesystem and PLC is achieved by OPC technology of SIMATIC.NET which can collect andstore the information of production and management about the engine in real-time to monitormachine status in the assembly line. The message will be displayed in system interface. Thiscan exchange information between field devices and workshop staff in real-time, and theoperation of the job site can be mastered intuitionally. A signal will be sent outon any irregular issue or things out of control, then the production site can be fully exposedand improved at any abnormal condition. This project reduces the equipment failure effectively caused by equipment accident or short of material, greatly improves theproduction efficiency, reduces production costs and achieves better management ofproduction process. It benefits the enterprise considerably, and is great significant for thecompetition and development of enterprises.This paper introduces the background, purpose and significance of the Andon system’sresearch, analyzes the basic structure and functions of the system, and put forward the designscheme of the whole system and the database. According to the design scheme, this papercompletes the implementation of Andon system’s hardware and software, and makes thecorresponding debugging and operation. And the Andon monitoring system is alsosuccessfully developed. At present, this system is installed in the individual enterprise, therunning effect of the system meets the anticipate goal and the actual production requirements,and it makes the enterprise production benefits substantially improved.