Like any good doctor, each machine operator at Amcor’s PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) Packing plant in Blythewood, S.C., carries a pager. Because the operators there tend more than one machine, they rely on one-way alphanumeric pagers to keep in touch with their automated charges as they go about their business of producing plastic bottles and preforms for the food and beverage industry.

When one of the injection-molding, labeling or blow-molding machines begins to exhibit symptoms of a developing problem, the ailing machine calls its operator, transmitting a short message identifying itself and explaining the trouble it’s having. Using this information, the operator then decides on the best course of action, that is, whether to complete the task at hand or to go to the machine to examine it and administer the appropriate corrective action.

This kind of communication between operators and their machines is becoming increasingly commonplace in automated factories that practice lean and just-in-time manufacturing—thanks largely to computer and information technologies that were developed initially for consumers and offices. In some cases, these technologies have been available to consumers commercially for years at OfficeMax and other retail stores.

The migration of these so-called commercial off-the-shelf technologies (COTS) onto the factory floor shows no signs of slowing. And, “they haven’t even had their most significant impact yet,” says Keith Campbell, executive director, OMAC (Open Modular Architecture Control) Packaging Working Group, at the Louisiana Center for Manufacturing Sciences. He points to the acceptance of a number of commercial devices on the factory floor: personal digital assistants (PDAs), tablet personal computers (PCs), cell phones and wireless communications.

“If anything, we’re seeing a narrowing of the time gap between the creation of these home and office technologies and their adoption in the manufacturing environment,” notes Ron Sielinski, senior industry technology strategist, at Microsoft Corp., the Redmond, Wash., software company. A case in point is the PDA. A pocket PC, it was originally designed for people on the go, but has already found a home in progressive factories.

“Most people in the home and office environments are using PDAs to keep track of their calendars, their contacts, and, to a certain extent, their inboxes,” continues Sielinski. “In the manufacturing environment, however, people are using the devices differently.” Here, PDAs contain custom applications that help users to perform tasks, such as preventive maintenance or troubleshooting problems, while walking around the machine. Using a PDA equipped with wireless communications, a technician even can search manuals and engineering drawings without having to drag them to the machine and flip through hundreds of pages.

The use of tablet PCs in the factory has grown in a similar way. Originally designed for people on the go in the office, tablet PCs have the same basic capabilities as PDAs, but the screen real estate is larger. A common application is shipping and receiving. “It’s very easy to go down a manifest [on a tablet PC] and check things off,” says Sielinski. Users can insert a digital signature and submit the manifest to either the supply chain execution system or an order management system.

Mining for Information

Although wireless communication is the most visible of these so-called commercial computer and information technologies, many more are at work behind the scenes at Amcor. Each machine at the Blythewood plant is connected to a sophisticated PC and Ethernet-based computer network that contains elements that are industrial versions of technology originally developed for home and office computing. Besides the Ethernet infrastructure and the PCs themselves, one of these elements is the real-time historian in the software from Lake Forest, Calif.-based Invensys Wonderware that processes the raw data coming from the machines, gleans useful information from it and distributes the information to the places that need it.

The PCs controlling each machine or group of machines send process information directly to Wonderware’s IndustrialSQL Server, a real-time database organized around Microsoft’s structured query language (SQL). Wonderware essentially built it upon Microsoft’s SQL Server, adding some functions that allow it to store large amounts of data much more quickly than is required for general office use. “We have systems that process 40,000 to 50,000 transactions per second, which is three to four times what the New York Stock Exchange does,” notes Tim Sowell, vice president, ArchestrA Product Strategy, Wonderware.

For retrieval of data, the company developed a number of reporting tools that leverage other technologies. Tools for the Microsoft Office suite, for example, simplify report generation. According to Sowell, these tools solve one of the biggest problems the software industry ...