The Timezone And Availability Tracker

For OEE calculation it’s essential to have Timezone And Availability Tracker objects configured for all Connector components on assets, for which OEE is to be calculated.

These objects keep track of the availability of data transmission between a Connector component and the Core of the system, and provide timezone information regarding the location of the asset for OEE calculation.

So availability outages will be taken into account for the calculation of meaningful OEE KPI, and timezone information enables OEE Equipment Monitor objects to translate the Local Time from each individual production site to UTC Time, while the operational staff on each site can work with data relative to their specific local time (e.g. shift start and shift end).

Creating a new Timezone And Availability Tracker Object

Go to the I/O Model and right click the intended Connector object. From the context menu select Admin  New  Data Processing  Timezone And Availability Tracker.

In the Common section, give the new object a suitable name and -optionally- provide a description. For our example setup, leave all the other settings on their default values.

Creating a new Timezone And Availability Tracker
Figure 1. Creating a new Timezone And Availability Tracker
By default, the Timezone And Availability Tracker uses the timezone settings of Operation System of the machine on which the Connector service is running. In the Advanced Configuration you could switch the Timezone Determination to 'Manual' configuration. Then the Timezone can be selected and a list of Adjustment Rulesets for daylight saving times can be configured. For each phase (e.g. year), the start date and the end date of the daylight saving period need to be provided, as well as the 'Adjustment Time' (i.e. the offset in relation to UTC Time) in minutes.

Click Create to create the new Timezone And Availability Tracker object in the I/O Model.

The Timezone And Availability Tracker Variables

By default, Enable Variables checkbox is checked, so a 'Tracker' Variable Group object with a number of Variable objects is also created, resulting in this I/O Model for our example:

The new Timezone And Availability Tracker with variables
Figure 2. The new Timezone And Availability Tracker with variables

The Timezone And Availability Tracker Output Property Sections

Once the Timezone And Availability Tracker object is created, its Property Panel shows three new properties sections: Ticker, Preview and Tracker. These are for output only and can not be configured.

The Preview section is only updated if the Enable Preview checkbox is checked in the Common section.
The Output Sections in the Properties
Figure 3. The Output Sections in the Properties