Equipment integration

Set it up in your plant

Connecting your machines with Equipment integration. Equipment integration connects machines over SECS/GEM (HSMS), OPC UA or MQTT: tool types and machine interfaces you design, an equipment node that holds the links, events into states, alarms, recipes, commands from transactions, GEM300 carriers and jobs.

1. Install itIT

   On the plant's OpenCore MES server, in its plant folder: sign in once with a licence token from your account at suites.opencoremes.com (one token per installation: production, test, training), install the suite, then restart OpenCore MES (opencore-mes start, or the service that runs it). The start log then lists it.

   opencore-mes suite login

   opencore-mes suite install equipment

2. Set the node's secretsIT

   On the MES server, in the plant's settings (.env or the service's environment): the node's shared secret, where recipe files are kept, and the key that seals them; then restart.

   MES_SECRET_EQUIPMENT_NODE=<a long random string>

   MES_SECRET_EQUIPMENT_RECIPE_ROOTS=/srv/recipes

   MES_SECRET_EQUIPMENT_RECIPE_KEY=<another long random string>

3. Run the equipment node on the tool networkIT

   On a machine that reaches the tools (never one open to the internet), run the node from the installed suite's folder, with the MES's address and the same secret. It holds one link per machine and keeps what the MES has not taken yet; run a second one for failover, and leases move the machines over.

   cd suites/equipment

   MES_URL=https://mes.plant.example EQUIPMENT_NODE_TOKEN=<the node secret> npm run node

4. Try it on a test installation firstIT

   Install it on a test or training installation before production. There, load its sample records (Designer → From the suites → Load its sample records) and walk the screens with the people who will use them. Samples never go on production.

5. Design a tool type per kind of machineEngineering

   Designer → From suites → Tool type: the names your MES reads from and sends to every machine of that kind (variables with units, events and what they carry, alarms, commands, recipes), and the object whose records are these machines with the field holding each one's address.

6. Map each vendor with a machine interfaceEngineering

   One interface per vendor model: its SVIDs, CEIDs, ALIDs and remote commands (HSMS), node ids and methods (OPC UA) or topics and paths (MQTT), mapped onto the tool type's names, with unit conversions and code tables; which event or alarm moves the machine's record. The check says what the tool type needs that the interface does not map. Test against the vendor's tool, or an open-ei simulator of it, before review.

7. Take its designs through a changeDesigner

   Designer → From the suites → Start a change from it. The change holds the tool types and interfaces you drew (and, if you take it, the pack's example tools, recipes, carriers and stations). Change what differs in your plant before submitting (labels, fields, limits, screens). Run the fitness test: every transaction's scenarios run in a sandbox. Submit; a reviewer passes it; Engineering and Production approve it; it goes live as one change, all of it or none.

   • Nothing goes live until it is approved: the suite only offers its designs.
   • Once live they are your plant's own designs: they keep working if the suite is removed.
8. Use the machines in your designsDesigner

   Station screens with the status, alarms and recipes blocks; transaction steps that send a command or a recipe, sent last, once every other check held; recipes kept and released in the MES; GEM300 carriers and jobs at track in for 300 mm tools.

9. Go liveEngineering

   Connect one machine at a time; watch the Equipment monitor (communicating since, alarms, last reports, what was refused) before adding the next.

The same guide is in FLAMES once the suite is installed: Designer, From the suites, Set-up guide.