Hello,
I want to update a Tulip table with data from several machines on the same production line.
First machine called Textor is cutting a long sausage to round thin pieces, Second machine called Sealpack, packing those pieces in a box and seal it, Third machine called Weighter, weighing those packed boxes and throw away packs that are under given weight.
In this Tulip table will be fields of start and end of date and time and duration of current state, the machine current state, takts that done by each machine, give away quantities of 1st and 3rd machine (2nd machine don’t have this field), production order number, material number, material description and shift number (last 4 fields are from Sealpack).
I’ve tried to build automations for both first machines but, I didn’t find how to collect data of current machine state, duration, start time, end time and takts (most important fields).
I hope that I clearified ok what I want to do here, so, can current automation feature answer to all I want to do here ?
If I understand correctly you want to populate a table with values of a specific machine, based on the attribute changing at the machine. This can be done by using either the “Machine Attribute Changed” Event or the “Machine Activity Updated” event.
However, what you are describing is very much the functionality of the Machine Activity Table and the Machine Triggers in Tulip. Is there a reason why you need Machine data in a Tulip Table and not use the Machine Activity Table?
Hi Santiago,
I have to populate a Tulip table for 2 reasons :
This table will contain data of 2 or more machines, you can’t do such thing in Activity table
Exporting activity table to external system is a nightmare, there are several steps that must be done one after the other, can’t be done in a reasonable time or resources, we had here open ticket about that and meeting with relevant people by Tulip side
So, in this table, there should be fields of custom activity fields but also standard fields such as start time, end time, duration etc’
Another point is that if I will take current record, I won’t get values of end date and duration because they are not updated yet, I have to get previous record only (one before current).
Can I develop such use case in Automation feature ?
You are right, it will be difficult to get the previous record of a created automation. But maybe we can think of a nice workaround, You can use some sort of extra table (Machine Stations Table) to save the value of the ID of the previous record. You will need 2 tables (Machine Log Table, and Machine Stations Table) in general and then 1 automation per machine.
So your automation can look like this.
Machine Attribute Changed Event (specify machine and attribute) → Get Record from Machine Stations Table for the specific Machine (your ID should be the Machine Name, and one field will be Previous Reported ID → Create/Update Record, in which you use the Previous Reported ID as the Record ID from the Machine Log Table and you will set the end time and duration by using Current Date and Time, → Update Data (Here you will create a variable with your new Record ID for your new record in the Machine Log Table using a randomstring() )–> Create/Update Table Record, this is where you will create the new record with you current machine reported data for Record ID (variable that you created in the previous block) → Create/Update Table Record, you will save the Updated Record ID in the Machine Stations Table in the Previous Record ID.
Ideally you will need 3 different automations, one for each machine, but you can populate the same Tulip Table and have a specific column field that specifies the Machine.
I have not tested this myself but let me know how it works, i am interested to see if this approach works
