01 The Friedhelm Loh Group utilises the domain expertise of several sister companies. How has this arrangement helped with the development of the new “Oncite DPS energy management”?
Meuser: The interplay of all these different skills within the Friedhelm Loh Group had a huge influence on the outcome and was really valuable. Different teams of experts have helped expand the ONCITE Industrial Suite to include an energy management service. The Rittal Digital Operations department with the Energy & Power, IT and Service business units and the ONCITE DPS R&D team, with its factory-based IIoT know-how, played a major part in the development work.
02 The Oncite Digital Production System (DPS) has been expanded to include an energy monitoring function. To what extent did the concept of “composable IT” come into play?
Meuser: We were able to expand the already productive ONCITE DPS system landscape at the Rittal Smart Factory in Haiger, adding the energy monitoring function during live operations. That was only possible thanks to the Scheer Group’s “Scheer PAS” application composition platform, which is firmly embedded in the ONCITE DPS.
03 What are the benefits of integrating energy monitoring into the Digital Production System?
Meuser: Energy management solutions have been on the market for a long time. Extending the ONCITE DPS product portfolio with an energy monitoring function makes it possible to correlate the energy consumption in a factory with a finished product. As a result, the energy footprint for every component can be worked out, meaning that, in the future, it will be possible to map production facilities with finely tuned energy consumption in response to electricity supplies.
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