Another use-case addresses a very specific area of stone slabs ant tiles production. The industrial partners involved are: CEI – the manufacturer of the stone cutting machines and ALONG – producer of stone slabs and tiles. The process of stone slabs and tiles production includes several steps: (i) raw stone is cut and divided in multiply stone slabs, (ii) polishing of the stone slabs, and (iii) then the tiles moulds are used to cut the stone slabs. After every stage a quality check is performed to identify possible material defects, such as voids, natural cracks, etc, as well as production defects. The use-case has multiply goals, including: amount reduction of defected parts due to equipment failures, automation of the quality check procedure reducing the manual checks and correspondingly the load on operator considering both natural defects and production defects detection.
One of the goals of the use-case is to minimize the human involvement in the quality assessment process. However, it is not always feasible, as for instance to detect natural defects of material (stone), but still operator can get significant assistance from ZDMP platform and corresponding services to automatically detect some defects.
This use-case offers additional update to the stone cutting machine through the cutting blades quality control, identifying wearing out. Moreover, the CEI machines allow users to customize the shape and form of products through different moulds and ZDMP provides support for more efficient material usage through more efficient projection of the moulds.
ZDMP platform makes use of variety of data acquired about machines operation and quality of material. In this way, it is possible to improve the efficiency of production process and reduce the scrap output that can be caused by degradation of equipment parts
The stages of production process are tightly interconnected. If ZDMP platform detects the wearing out of the cutting blades, the production process has to be stopped not to possibly waste the material. Or, if some natural defect of material is being detected, it can be still possible to use the material through adjustment of the moulds and avoid the defected part.
ZDMP platform has the goal to improve and automate the quality check on every stage of the stone slabs and tiles production. Reduce, where possible, the human involvement in the quality check to minimum, e.g. control of the wearing out of the cutting blades. Both the data about equipment performance, as well as material scanning data are utilized. Moreover, CEI machines also provide the data from cameras and projectors used to optimize the cutting process and save material.