Using IoT Technologies to Facilitate Human – Machine Communication: A Use Case for Setup Time Acquisition

Industry 4.0 is changing the industrial paradigm. The combination of cyber-physical systems (CPS) with 4.0 technologies has endless possibilities to im-prove the industrial environment. This article focuses on the combination of CPS and the Internet of Things (IoT) to facilitate communication between CPS and hu-mans, a topic in which research is still lacking. In particular, this research aims to overcome the challenge of accurately knowing the setup time of machine tools. The machine tool's sensing system is not able to measure the setup time because it is switched off during this process. However, the incorporation of an additional device can solve this problem. This paper presents a case study that uses an IoT device with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), so that the user can communicate with the CPS and know what the machine setup time has been, in order to calculate the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) considering or ignoring the setup time. The results conclude that IoT improves the communication between the CPS and the user and shows the importance of setup time to correctly measure productivity and define improvement strategies.