Skip to content
INDUSTRY · AUTOMOTIVE

An automotive line runs on takt. One stalled cell costs the whole line — and you shouldn't be blind to which one.

Machining cells, stamping presses, and robotic weld and assembly cells — FANUC next to Siemens S7 next to Mazak, with PLC-fronted machines in between. Elpis collects from all of it over native protocols, normalizes every signal to one vocabulary, and watches the presses, robots, and motors that stop a line — without replacing a single validated machine. Operating across India and the Middle East.

Live integrations: FOCAS2 · MTConnect · Brother HTTP · Modbus TCP · OPC UA Client · Siemens S7. FANUC MT-LINKi REST on the roadmap.

THE REALITY ON AN AUTOMOTIVE LINE

One takt time. A dozen vendors. Zero tolerance for a stalled cell.

An automotive line is a chain where every link runs to the same beat. A machining cell turning an engine block or a transmission case. A stamping press feeding the body shop. A row of robotic weld and assembly cells. They came from different vendors in different years — FANUC turning centers, Siemens-controlled press and line PLCs, Mazak machining centers, robots and stations fronted by PLCs — and each one reports in its own dialect, if it reports at all. The line only moves as fast as its slowest link, and the moment one cell stalls, the cost is the whole line, by the minute.

The pressure is relentless and it comes from two directions. Above, the OEM and the tier-1 contract demand traceability and an OEE number that holds up under audit. On the floor, takt time leaves no slack — a press throwing intermittent faults or a weld robot whose servo is drifting becomes a line stoppage before anyone has stitched the signals together. OEE today is reconciled across cells after the shift, describing a problem that already ate into the day's count. And the data that would have flagged the drift was on the line the whole time — just never reaching the people who could act on it in takt.

Replacing the equipment isn't the move. It's validated for the parts it runs, qualified by the customer, and tuned by the operators who run it. What needs to modernize is the data layer, not the line. The automotive plants that get there put one protocol-agnostic runtime in front of every controller and PLC, normalize every signal at the edge, instrument the presses and robots and motors that stop a line, and let the existing SCADA and MES keep doing their jobs.

"The line only moves as fast as its slowest link — and the data that would have flagged it was there the whole time."

WHAT ELPIS DOES ON AN AUTOMOTIVE LINE

The data layer modernizes. The validated line stays.

Speak every controller and PLC on the line.EdgeConnect polls your mixed line over native protocols — FOCAS2 for FANUC, Siemens S7 for press, line, and cell PLCs, Modbus TCP for older machines fronted by a PLC, MTConnect for open-standard machines (Mazak and others), Brother HTTP for Brother machining centers, and OPC UA Client where a controller exposes it. Robots and stations are read the same way they expose themselves — over S7, OPC UA Client, or Modbus from their controlling PLC. Canonical vocabulary at the edge means a cycle count, a fault code, or a servo reading means the same thing whichever cell produced it. FANUC MT-LINKi REST integration is on the roadmap. → /capabilities/connectivity-edge
One OEE and takt truth across every cell.EREMOS V2 computes OEE Segments from the edge-collected signals against your OEE definition — so the number that took a post-shift reconciliation to assemble holds the same meaning across a stamping press and a robotic assembly cell, and availability and performance can be read against takt rather than after it. → /capabilities/operational-intelligence
Watch the equipment that stops a line.VAS reads vibration signatures on the rotating and reciprocating equipment a line lives on — stamping presses, weld and assembly robots, spindle motors, and fans — to give early warning when a signature crosses a threshold your maintenance team sets. E-IDOS reads particle contamination and water saturation on hydraulic-press and lubrication systems (ISO 4406 / NAS 1638). The aim is to trend ahead of a failure and act between shifts, not to react to a stopped line. → /capabilities/condition-monitoring
Reach the signals the PLC won't give you.Where a station or machine exposes nothing useful, mDAQ acquires the sensor signal directly — temperature, pressure, flow, vibration — without waiting on a controller retrofit or a robot-vendor integration. → /capabilities/data-acquisition

The data layer modernizes. The validated line stays.

PROOF POSTURE

Built for lines where downtime is measured by the minute.

Elpis is deployed across high-volume machining and assembly operations — mixed-vendor lines with consequence-heavy presses, robots, and motors. Operating across India and the Middle East. The platform runs offline-first: the license validates locally with no phone-home, and per-route store-and-forward is built to preserve every reading through a network or broker drop — queuing locally and replaying in source order on reconnect. Every configuration change is captured in a hash-chained, tamper-evident audit trail.

Full operational trust posture → /security · Anonymized deployment patterns → /customers

COMMON QUESTIONS

What automotive teams ask first.

Which controllers and robots can you actually collect from?

FANUC over FOCAS2, Siemens controllers over S7, older machines fronted by a PLC over Modbus TCP, plus MTConnect (Mazak and other open-standard machines), Brother HTTP, and OPC UA Client where it's exposed — all shipping today. Robots and stations are read however they expose themselves — typically over S7, OPC UA Client, or Modbus from their controlling PLC; there is no separate robot-only protocol. FANUC MT-LINKi REST integration is on the roadmap. Bring the controller and cell list to the scoping call and we confirm the collection path per machine.

Do we have to take validated line equipment offline to connect it?

No. EdgeConnect reads each controller and PLC as a read-only client — it never changes control logic, and no cell comes offline to connect it. The validated line stays as qualified; the data layer modernizes around it.

Can you catch a press, robot, or motor failure before it stalls the line?

That's what VAS and E-IDOS are for. VAS reads vibration signatures on presses, robots, and motors; E-IDOS reads hydraulic and lubrication oil health. They give early warning when a signature crosses a threshold your maintenance team defines — a trigger to act between shifts, not a guarantee against every failure.

We run more than one plant. Does this aggregate?

Each plant runs its own EdgeConnect with a per-gateway identity; EREMOS V2 aggregates across plants for a fleet view. Multi-site visibility comes from aggregation — never from one runtime stretched across plants. → /solutions/multi-site-operations

Does this replace our SCADA or MES?

No. Elpis sits beside them. EdgeConnect publishes canonical signals (MQTT, OPC UA Server); EREMOS V2 exposes OEE, alarms, and reports via API. Your SCADA keeps operator HMIs and control; your MES keeps scheduling, work orders, and traceability records. → /architecture

NEXT STEP

Bring us your line — every cell and every vendor.

A controller and cell list, the presses and robots that worry you, and an OEE definition — that's enough to scope a proof of value. We run it on your real protocols against your real signals, in takt.