Published 11/1/2023

ABB Software Platform Streamlines Data Management

OptiFact is designed to speed up diagnostics and decision making, increasing production uptime with less engineering effort.

Edited by: Chris Pasion

Managing Editor, Modern Machine Shop | Production Machining

Photo Credit: ABB Inc.

ABB Robotics has released its new modular OptiFactsoftware platform, which streamlines data collection, visualization and analysis in automated production facilities. The platform enables users to collect, manage and analyze data from hundreds of factory devices, including ABB robots, to determine key performance indicators such as cycle time and overall equipment efficiency (OEE).

By speeding up diagnostics and decision making, ABB says OptiFact increases the production line uptime with less engineering effort, ensuring production can keep pace with customer demand. With OptiFact, factory operators can determine the root cause of production errors and use ABB’s RobotStudio Cloud to make adjustments to the program and develop an improved robotic solution.

RobotStudio’s desktop, cloud and AR viewer solutions help users plan and imagine new deployments of ABB industrial robots or adapt existing ones to new production tasks. Its Automatic Path Planning feature enables robots to determine the most efficient paths and avoid collisions with existing obstacles. Reportedly offering 99% accuracy between the robot’s digital twin and its real-world deployment, RobotStudio speeds design and commissioning time by up to 50%, according to ABB.

Application-specific AI-driven software technology such as ABB’s Item Picker facilitate the realization of robotics deployments with enhanced performance, safety and quality. Motion control cuts the power requirements of pick and place operations by up to 17%, speeding tasks by 13%. VSLAM technology (visual simultaneous localization and mapping) leverages artificial intelligence for accurate indoor navigation in dynamic indoor environments.

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