FANUC and Cisco Collaborate to Increase Uptime for Connected Machines

San Jose, California – October 5, 2015 — Cisco^® and FANUC America today announced a collaboration to connect industrial robots in the manufacturing industry. The robots operate on connected systems to allow new, preventative maintenance on operational equipment, which can result in a dramatic reduction of unplanned production downtime.   

The announcement comes after Cisco and FANUC America’s 12-month Zero Downtime (ZDT) pilot project with a major automotive manufacturer. FANUC America and Cisco helped significantly decrease related production downtime and as a result increased overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).

Many manufacturers operate at high volumes, and unplanned production downtime is costly. With the FANUC ZDT Solution, the system proactively detects and informs of potential equipment or process problems before unexpected downtime occurs, allowing the maintenance issue to be addressed in a planned outage window. 

Cisco’s new Connected Machines offering helps enable machine builders and end-user manufacturers to embed Cisco switching, security and compute technologies directly in the machine itself - or in a factory-floor aggregation device.   This “edge compute” approach optimizes available network resources and bandwidth by analyzing big data on the plant floor prior to transmitting to a data center or cloud-based data store for further analysis.

FANUC, a world-leading CNC systems and industrial robot company that supplies machines to manufacturers, uses big data analytics to identify maintenance procedures that can prevent breakdowns before they occur. 

In the past, issues were discovered only after production downtime had occurred in the factory and only when a physical connection to the robot allowed for analysis and subsequent service.   With the FANUC ZDT solution, the robot is connected through a Cisco network and then into a Cisco edge compute data collector in the plant. 

The data relevant for the maintenance issue is sent to the Cisco Cloud where the cloud analytics engine captures the “out of range” exceptions and predicts the maintenance need. Then, an alert is sent from the cloud application to FANUC service personnel and to the manufacturing customer about the need for replacement part. The part is then shipped to arrive at the factory in time for the next scheduled planned maintenance window.   

Rick Schneider, CEO for FANUC America says the potential for this solution across all their implementations could add profound value for customers and help enable the IoT Digital Transformation that many manufacturers have long anticipated. 

“Preventing unplanned downtime is a huge savings for our customers and makes the FANUC robots with ZDT a tremendous value.   With Cisco, we are helping our customers access this new value and also re-imagining our go-to-market strategy for after-sales service and support.”

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About FANUC America Corporation

FANUC America Corporation is a subsidiary of FANUC CORPORATION in Japan and provides industry-leading CNC systems, robotics, and ROBOMACHINEs. FANUC’s innovative technologies help manufacturers maximize productivity, reliability, and profitability. Headquartered in Rochester Hills, Michigan, FANUC America has facilities throughout North and South America. Learn more at www.fanucamerica.com or explore collaborative robots at crx.fanucamerica.com.

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