For Pascal Schröder, Development Coordination Digitalization at the CHIRON Group, umati – short for universal machine technology interface – is »a crucial step towards networked production and Industry 4.0. umati makes it easier to connect machining centers and peripheral devices from different manufacturers to customer-specific IT ecosystems and therefore has the potential to establish itself as a global standard for the machine tool industry in the medium to long term.«

How umati works

Shared effort, shared standard
In addition to having a lot of potential, umati also has strong advocates, who are jointly promoting the project of a standardized interface: Alongside the CHIRON Group, other leading machine tool manufacturers such as DMG Mori and Trumpf are also part of the core team behind the initiative. All reputable providers of control systems are also represented, as well as other supporters, such as SAP and the Institute for Control Engineering of Machine Tools and Manufacturing Units at the University of Stuttgart.

For the first time, umati offers the possibility of simple and defined integration of machining centers in superordinate MES or ERP systems. umati is based on the OPC UA interface standard, which is becoming increasingly established in machine and plant engineering. The advantages are platform-independent, cross-manufacturer communication and integrated mechanisms for high data security.

The CHIRON Group has already demonstrated how networked production works in practice at the EMO 2019 using a DZ 16 W five axis machining center with umati interface.The machine was integrated in both the VDW-Cloud and the CHIRON DataLine. In addition, umati was used to integrate other external machines from different manufacturers in DataLine. Using DataLine, it was possible to determine, analyze and visualize machine information from the CHIRON machining center as well as from the external machines live.

For more information about umati and the EMO Showcase, see here