The problem: KPIs that arrive too late
Management wants to see efficiency, downtime and output per line. The plant has those numbers, but they go through notes, spreadsheets and e-mails before becoming a chart. The result is a nice dashboard with yesterday’s data, or last week’s, and little trust in what it shows.
What changes when Power BI sees the machine
With PLC data reaching a database that Power BI reads, KPIs start to reflect what is happening on the floor:
- OEE, availability and performance calculated from real machine signals.
- Downtime recorded the moment it happens, with duration and line.
- Output per shift, batch and product with no manual consolidation.
- A single data source, so operations, maintenance and management look at the same number.
Meetings stop asking “is this number right?” and start asking “what are we going to do about it?”.
How Axzon solves it
The AxPLCcomm Gateway, developed by Axzon, keeps the connection to your PLCs (Siemens, Rockwell, Modbus and OPC) and delivers the data as an SQL database that Power BI and other analytics tools read directly. It runs as a service on Windows or Linux and is configured through a web page. The Gateway delivers the current values; the history of downtime, shifts and OEE is kept in a separate database fed from it.
Axzon’s automation team can handle the whole project: define the KPIs with you, connect the machines, prepare the database and build the first dashboards.
Try AxPLCcomm for 90 days or request a quote for our team to build your KPIs.