ATS Bus is a Manufacturing Service Bus that helps manufacturers around the world to reduce production downtime, improve business continuity and increase data visibility. ATS Bus is under constant development as new features and improvements are suggested by customers as well as by the ATS engineers themselves, calling on their best-practise knowledge across a range of industries.
The latest version of ATS Bus has many new features, including the following:
- Faster Configuration: Configuration items can be exported and imported between configurations which saves time when carrying out very large implementations.
- Actions Based on Received Data: Actions can be executed based on the data received. This allows more complex workflows for shop floor orchestration. For example, you could send a message that an order has been completed once the number of units processed hits a certain limit.
- Perform Calculations on Data: Before sending data onto its destination ATS Bus can perform a mathematical calculation on it. This saves it having to be sent to another location to be calculated before going to its final destination. For example you might want to send the weight of processed units instead of the number of units. By multiplying the number of processed units by the weight per unit you can send the value in the required format.
- New Ways to Connect: On the shop floor you can now connect via a serial port, through a Web Service Client or with an MS SQL database. In the IT domain connections can now be made to applications such as PLM and ERP via a Web Service Client.
- Bus Stop Variables: These store values between messages and allow more complex workflows. An example would be an RFID tag that is read at the start of a production process but must be available until the part leaves the station.
And that’s just for starters. For more information on the benefits that your plant could receive from implementing a Manufacturing Service Bus go to the ATS Bus page.