Why the "normal" way doesn't fit most Indian floors
Factory software from abroad assumes the press has a data port — Euromap 63, Euromap 77 or OPC UA — and that a network cable gets it everything. On a typical Ludhiana or Rajkot floor, most presses are ten- to twenty-year-old Indian and Chinese machines with no port at all. The alternative those vendors offer is a retrofit kit wired into the controller, usually several times the cost of what follows, and an owner reasonably worried about the warranty and the AMC.
The press is still telling you everything, just not over a cable. It closes its clamp once per shot, and it draws power. Both can be measured from outside the controller.
What to tap on each press
1. A shot-count signal
Every injection moulding machine has a relay or output that fires when the mould closes or the clamp locks; older machines also expose a counter output. An electrician takes that signal to a PLC input (or a cheap counter module) in a panel beside the press. One pulse = one shot. This is the single most valuable wire on the floor.
2. An energy meter
A three-phase meter on the press's supply, pulse-output or Modbus. The cheap ones (₹3,000–6,000) give kWh pulses; Modbus meters (₹8,000–15,000) also give amps and kW. Make sure the CT ratio is set correctly — a meter with the wrong ratio reads five times low and nobody notices for months. We have seen exactly that on two presses.
3. A run/stop bit (optional)
If the controller has an "in auto" or "motor on" output, log it. If not, running or stopped can be worked out from the shot signal and the current draw.
What you cannot get this way: barrel temperatures, injection pressure, cushion, alarm codes. Those live on the HMI screen. For most plants the counters pay for themselves long before anyone misses those.
The plant PC and the logger
All the press signals go to one PC in the plant running a logger — Siemens WinCC, the PLC vendor's own software, or a small program — that writes a row per press per reading into a table (SQL Server, MySQL, even a CSV). One row per press per second or per minute, with the running total of shots and the running total of kWh. That table is the integration point. The ERP reads it; nobody has to reshape it.
Two rules make the data honest:
Send cumulative counters, not differences. If a reading is lost, a per-minute amount is gone forever; a running total still carries the truth in the next one.
Timestamp the reading, not the write. And index the timestamp column — the ERP reads only what is newer than what it saw last.
What the software has to do with it
This is where most "IoT dashboards" fall down. Raw counters are messy: they reset after a power cut, 16-bit timers wrap at 32,767, a frozen logger keeps writing the same number for an hour and then jumps. The software must turn this into one honest record per press per minute — shots, run seconds, kWh, and the cycle of each completed shot read off the timer — and must say "not recorded" for a gap rather than "zero output". Then the useful things follow:
Parts made = shots × cavities running (the ERP knows the mould and the cavities from the work order). Cycle time per shot against the mould's standard. Running, idle, setting and down minutes, and from them real OEE. kWh per shot, split between the jobs that ran on the press. Alerts when a press stops with no reason, runs slower than usual, burns power while stopped, or its counter stops moving.
What it costs
Per press: the I/O tap and wiring (a few thousand rupees), the meter (₹3,000–15,000), and the electrician's time. Shared: the PLC or counter panel, the plant PC and its logger. For a nine-press floor the whole wiring job is usually less than one Euromap retrofit on a single press. Budget a day of testing per few presses: count shots by hand for an hour and compare.
Checklist before you call anyone
For each press: make and year; does the controller have Euromap/OPC UA (then use it); is there a mould-close relay or counter output; is there a meter already; connected load in kW. For the plant: is there a PC that stays on; can it reach the internet over HTTPS (the agent only needs outbound). With that list a vendor or an electrician can quote the job in a day.
This is how Cystems reads presses: a read-only agent on the plant PC, one record per press per minute, and we set the machines up with you. The analysis of six days of Star's presses — mould changes and slowdowns found from the counters alone — is on the homepage.