Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) within the Resource Efficient Supply and Manufacturing Environment (RESUME) testbed

The University of Strathclyde (UOS) seeks notes of interest from suppliers able to achieve seamless ISA-95 compliant digital connectivity for seventy-three (73) machines located in the Advanced Forming Research Centre (AFRC). This digital connectivity includes real-time data acquisition from different manufacturing equipment and machinery as well as enabling seamless data integration and communication with Data Analytics and Storage infrastructure via the Network.

This potential tender is the key part of RESuME testbed which will comprise of various tenders targeted at supporting the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS) Digital Factory, currently under construction.

UOS is conducting this market sounding exercise to help evaluate future sourcing options for IIoT work package within RESuME testbed. The project is working to a tight deadline and as such, we are requesting expressions of interest, at latest, by 30th August 2021. Suppliers expressing interest in this call will be asked to respond to a detailed set of requirements by 10th September 2021.

This potential tender is focused on enabling digital connectivity for 73 machines located in the AFRC. Digital connectivity within the RESuME testbed will need to comprise of seamless, synchronised and centralised real-time data acquisition from existing machinery and equipment enabling further data processing, dashboarding, analysis and storage.

Due to the nature of NMIS operation, machinery and equipment selected for digital connectivity within this tender, have different digital capabilities and can be divided into two groups, as follows:

1. Machinery and equipment without communication means, such as various band saws, cranes, welders, legacy equipment etc. These machines might have legacy controllers or may only have a power supply cable (25 machines)

2. Machinery and equipment with communication means. These are controlled by a PLC or CNC, have HMI and can potentially communicate with external devices via various communication protocols, including but not limited to Modbus TCP/IP, Profibus, Ethernet, MTConnect, OPC UA etc. (48 machines)

For most of the machines, additional external data acquisition systems such as various gateways, IPCs, edge devices etc. will be required in order to achieve live data acquisition.

For machinery and equipment without any communication means, it is expected to use external systems (e.g., current clamps) to collect data on energy consumption a well as machines` on/off/idle status.

In order to sustain data collection and synchronisation from multiple machines and equipment as well as to provide access to this data for different (3rd party) applications, an open Message Bus system (unified namespace provider) needs to be in the centre of the digital transformation.

Thus, this tender covers real-time data acquisition from machines and equipment (directly, via gateways and/or external sensors), data integration and synchronisation using a Message Bus system as well as data visualisation on live dashboards. Therefore, this potential tender will consist of three (3) lots as described below.

Lots

This procurement was divided into 3 lots, each awarded separately.