An industrial factory with machinery and workers engaged in production.

ficonTEC relies on Industrial Edge

Siemens Industrial Edge is the optimal platform for equipping existing machines with the AI application and delivering new machines with the same AI model.

High precision machines – ficonTEC relies on Industrial Edge

The Industrial Edge platform offers many possibilities, particularly for a special-purpose machine manufacturer like ficonTEC. Together with the capabilities from an open Ecosystem it can boost Overall Equipment Efficiency, availability, and yield. In a business where precision must be in the nanometer range, these are important competitive advantages.

ficonTEC – an innovative high-tech company

Precision and top performance: As a special-purpose machine manufacturer, ficonTEC is regularly confronted with the challenge of manufacturing photonic systems for use in a variety of high-tech products, such as glass fiber modules for data communication in server farms. Among other products, the company also produces systems for the testing of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) on the wafer level. This requires maximum precision, efficiency, and product quality.

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Special-purpose machines – from Lower Saxony, Germany to the entire world

ficonTEC is an innovative high-tech company based in Achim, Lower Saxony, Germany, that has established its niche in a highly specialized market. Since 2001, the company has seen continuous growth and innovative developments. It is a recognized market leader in the automated assembly and testing of optoelectronic components and (hybrid) photonic devices.
ficonTEC’s technological expertise, its global customer base and, above all, its commitment to understanding its customers’ needs and finding optimal solutions, shape the company’s profile as a qualified business and development partner. The focus of the company in Lower Saxony is on maximizing the quality and performance of products, systems, and support.

The goal: Better Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE)

In order to meet existing challenges and offer its customers high-precision products, ficonTEC has set the following goals:

Boost OEE (Overall Equipment Efficiency) so that systems operate more efficiently, reliably, and at a higher speed.
Boost availability and reduce the probability of failure.
Increase yield in order to produce more usable components per hour.

To reach these goals, ficonTEC relies on data processing supported by AI. This is where Industrial Edge plays a key role.

Higher OEE

Reduced downtime

Increased yield

Improvement in the quality of the end product

In one of our use cases, we were actually able to improve quality and increase throughput by about 18 percent using AI and Industrial Edge.

Colin Dankwart, Domain Leader Machine Learning, ficonTEC Service GmbH

Improving positioning using machine learning algorithms

In order to reach a high degree of precision as well as the associated goals, ficonTEC uses machine learning algorithms. These algorithms have to be optimized in order to achieve an optimal starting position for the alignment of small components inside a customer module.ficonTEC’s customers’ requirements for positioning accuracy are extremely high – in the 100 nanometer range or less in some applications. Industrial Edge and AI or machine learning help achieve this crucial nanometer accuracy.

Industrial Edge from Siemens – the complete solution for edge computing in industry

To achieve its goals, ficonTEC has developed its own system for implementing sequential control. The company had already been working with Siemens for some time in the area of automation. The two companies know one another and trust their partnership. ficonTEC’s control system runs on Siemens SIMATIC IPCs. With Industrial Edge and as a partner, Siemens provides ficonTEC with a platform that precisely meets all its requirements.

Find out how IT is advancing production with Industrial Edge.

An independent, open and scalable platform

One outstanding criterion behind ficonTEC’s choice of Industrial Edge from Siemens was the openness of the system. The company relies on independence and wants to access data according to its own needs.

ficonTEC took charge of installing the management features on the local level and connected to systems in the field via remote solutions. Data security plays a huge role, so independence from a cloud and for ficonTEC’s end customers’ highly sensitive products are important.

ficonTEC can use the platform’s open-source components to implement its own use cases. Based on the Docker IT Standard, ficonTEC can scale its own application to the Industrial Platform to scale across their customers’ machines worldwide.

A platform that changes with the requirements

Another advantage of the open platform is that virtual edge devices can be installed and brownfield plants upgraded with minimal hardware adaptations. The AI machine learning algorithms can simply be downloaded.

Industrial Edge also provides a basis for a stable platform that flexibly changes along with requirements.

A platform that changes with the requirements is shown in the image.

ficonTEC’s use cases demonstrate how well machine data can be used in combination with AI in order to significantly boost productivity.

Thorsten Wolf, Sales Engineer, Siemens

A platform compatible with all existing systems

Another important factor behind the choice of Industrial Edge from Siemens was its compatibility with existing systems. ficonTEC uses Siemens machine computers and a large number of other Siemens components in the company’s machines.

The platform’s compatibility with all existing systems provides a huge competitive edge.

Cybersecurity for highly sensitive data

ficonTEC operates in a market segment in which data security is extremely important to end customers. The Siemens name alone stands for sophisticated security systems.

Another advantage is that Industrial Edge doesn’t necessarily need a cloud. It’s even possible to use a hub. This makes it possible to comply with industrial security standards.

But when working together, it’s also true that transparency strengthens trust. Checkboxes provide ficonTEC with an overview of all potential security vulnerabilities. In close collaboration, security flaws can be corrected and potential risks avoided.

Animation of industrial cybersecurity blocking threats to plant operations, network security and system integrity.