Case Study — Nexora
Connecting 12 Production Lines Under a Single Real-Time Operations Platform
Unified production visibility eliminating paper-based shift management
Industry
Discrete Manufacturing
Timeline
20 weeks
Team
7 engineers
Tech
OPC-UA + TimescaleDB + React
The Challenge
A discrete manufacturer running 12 production lines across 2 facilities had no unified view of throughput, quality, or utilization. Line managers operated with paper-based shift logs, verbal handoffs, and end-of-day Excel reports. Leadership was making production scheduling decisions on yesterday's data — decisions that were wrong 30% of the time.
Our Approach
How We Solved It
OPC-UA Machine Connectivity
Connected 180 machines across 12 production lines via OPC-UA protocol, establishing a real-time data stream of machine state, cycle counts, and quality signals without requiring PLC replacement.
Digital Shift Log & Handoff
Replaced paper shift logs with a tablet-based digital system that captures production events, quality holds, and maintenance requests in structured form — feeding directly into the operations dashboard.
Real-Time OEE Calculation
Built a streaming OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) engine that calculates Availability, Performance, and Quality in real time for each machine, line, and facility, updated every 60 seconds.
Production Scheduling Intelligence
Integrated real-time OEE and downtime data with the ERP demand plan to generate scheduling recommendations that optimize throughput against actual machine availability rather than theoretical capacity.
Engineering Process
How We Built It
Edge Computing for Data Collection
Deployed edge computing nodes at each line to aggregate machine data before sending to the cloud — reducing WAN bandwidth by 80% and enabling local dashboard functionality during connectivity outages.
Time-Series Architecture
TimescaleDB's hypertable partitioning handles 2M+ data points per day with automatic retention policies, compressing data older than 30 days by 92% while retaining full query capability.
Shift-Based Data Contextualization
Machine data is automatically tagged with shift, operator, product, and work order context, enabling root cause analysis by crew, product family, and production run — not just by machine.
Architecture Decisions
Key Technical Choices
OPC-UA Over Custom Protocols
Standardizing on OPC-UA rather than machine-specific protocols meant one integration framework across 14 different machine manufacturers — the connectors are reusable across future plant expansions.
Edge-Cloud Hybrid
Edge nodes provide local resilience (dashboards keep running during internet outages) while the cloud layer provides historical analytics, cross-facility comparison, and ML training data.
Event-Driven OEE vs Batch Calculation
Real-time event-driven OEE calculation rather than hourly batch jobs meant line supervisors could see OEE degradation within minutes of a problem, not after the shift ended.
Results
What We Delivered
Solution Blueprint
How It All Fits Together
- OPC-UA adapters (180 machines)
- Edge computing nodes
- Real-time event stream
- Streaming OEE engine
- TimescaleDB time-series
- Quality defect detection
- React operations dashboard
- Digital shift handoff
- ERP scheduling integration
Lessons Learned
What We Improved
OEE Visibility Alone Changes Behavior
Simply showing real-time OEE on screens at each line changed operator behavior before we deployed any alerting or automation. Visibility is an intervention.
Supervisor Buy-In Before Line Operator Buy-In
Line supervisors needed to understand the system before operators would adopt the digital shift logs. Skipping the supervisor layer caused two weeks of passive resistance.
Paper Doesn't Disappear Immediately
Operators ran parallel paper and digital logs for 3 weeks. We planned for it and used the parallel period to validate data quality rather than forcing immediate transition.
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