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    BlueprintCNC & machine shops

    CNC Machine Monitoring & OEE for Job Shops

    Connect mixed-age CNC machines via MTConnect, OPC UA or retrofit sensors, and see OEE, downtime reasons and alarms live on the shop floor.

    An example of how we'd build this for a company in this niche: the plan, the architecture and the targets we'd start from. Not a specific client's story.

    Target
    95%
    of downtime minutes with a reason code, within three months of go-live
    Target
    +5 pts
    OEE on the pilot cell within six months, against its first month of measured data
    Target
    < 10 s
    from a machine stopping to the andon screen showing it, from go-live
    The situation

    Who this is for

    Consider a contract machine shop with 25–40 CNC machines spanning three decades, from new 5-axis machining centres to 1990s lathes, running two shifts for automotive and industrial customers. Utilisation is estimated from job cards, downtime reasons are written from memory at the end of a shift, and the ERP only learns a job is late when someone walks the floor. The goal is live status and trustworthy OEE on every machine, with downtime reasons captured at the machine and fed back to planning.

    The hard part

    What makes it hard

    • Machines from different decades and control makers, such as Fanuc, Heidenhain or Siemens, expose data in different ways, and some expose nothing at all.
    • Operators won't walk to a PC to type a downtime reason, so capture has to take seconds at the machine or it won't happen.
    • OEE loses credibility fast when planned breaks, setups and first-off prove-outs are mixed in with real losses.
    • The shop-floor network was never designed for this, and connecting machines to the office LAN or straight to the cloud opens a path for ransomware into production.
    • Planners and the ERP need actual cycle times and part counts, not the estimates used when the job was quoted.
    The product

    What we'd build

    Machine connectivity

    Adapters for MTConnect and OPC UA where the control supports them, and retrofit current sensors or I/O modules on older machines to read run, idle and alarm states.

    Edge gateway

    An industrial PC per hall or cell collects, buffers and forwards data, so nothing is lost when the uplink drops and no machine talks to the internet directly.

    OEE & downtime reasons

    Availability, performance and quality per machine, shift and job. Operators pick a downtime reason on a tablet or big-button terminal at the machine, from a short list agreed with supervisors.

    Spindle & alarm data

    Spindle load, feed override and alarm history from connected controls, with alerts for repeating alarms. An optional model on the gateway can flag unusual spindle load that may point to tool wear.

    Andon screens & shift reports

    Floor screens show live machine states, and every shift change brings supervisors an automatic report of the top losses.

    ERP / MES handoff

    Actual cycle times, part counts and job completions posted to the ERP or MES, with job numbers taken from a barcode scan of the traveller at the machine.

    Under the hood

    Architecture

    From the people who use it down to the hardware and third-party systems it talks to.

    1. Apps
      • Andon screens on the floor
      • Operator reason terminals
      • Supervisor & planner dashboard
    2. Platform
      • Time-series store
      • OEE & downtime engine
      • Alert rules
      • ERP / MES connector
    3. Edge
      • Industrial gateway per hall
      • MTConnect & OPC UA adapters
      • Store-and-forward buffer
      • Optional anomaly model
    4. On site
      • CNC controls with data options
      • Retrofit sensors on older machines
      • Segmented OT network & firewall
    The plan

    Delivery plan

    The same four phases as every project we run - see how we work.

    1. Weeks 1–2

      Discovery

      A machine-by-machine survey of controls, installed options and network points, plus a look at how downtime and job data are recorded today.

    2. Weeks 3–4

      Design & architecture

      Network design with your IT or OT contact, a downtime-reason list agreed with supervisors, and a connection plan for each machine type.

    3. Weeks 5–14

      Build

      A pilot cell of five to eight machines goes live first, so OEE rules and reason codes are tuned on real data before the rest of the floor is connected.

    4. Weeks 15–16

      Launch & handover

      Remaining machines connected, operators and supervisors trained, and code, gateway images and runbooks handed over.

    The team

    • Product-minded tech lead
    • IIoT & edge engineer
    • Embedded engineer (part-time)
    • Full-stack engineer
    • OT security specialist (part-time)
    • QA engineer

    Compliance & security

    • Shop-floor connections follow the zones-and-conduits model of IEC 62443: machines stay on a segmented OT network, and only the gateway talks outward, through a firewall.
    • The design is read-only: retrofit sensors stay outside safety circuits and nothing writes to the CNC control, so the machine's safety functions are untouched.
    • Machine data tied to operator logins can become employee performance data under GDPR and labour law; in some countries works-council consultation is needed before go-live.
    • Depending on your size and what you make, NIS2 may apply directly, and larger customers, in automotive especially, often pass similar security requirements down the supply chain; we'd check which apply.

    Tech stack

    • OPC UA
    • MTConnect
    • MQTT
    • Go
    • Python
    • TimescaleDB
    • TypeScript
    • React
    • Docker

    Questions we usually get

    Our older machines have no network port. Can they still be monitored?

    Yes, at a basic level. A current sensor on the spindle drive, or the stack-light signals wired into an I/O module, can tell run, idle and alarm apart without touching the control. You won't get program names or spindle load from those machines, but you will get honest utilisation.

    Could this let anyone control our machines remotely?

    No. The gateway only reads data and never writes to a CNC control, and machines stay on a segmented network with no inbound access from the internet. Remote support access to the gateway, if you want it at all, goes through a VPN you control and can switch off.

    Do we have to replace our ERP or MES?

    No. The platform posts actual cycle times, part counts and job status into the system you already run, through its API or, for older systems, a scheduled file import. The aim is better data in your existing system, not another system to maintain.

    More blueprints

    Building something like this?

    30 minutes with the engineers who'd build it. We'll test this plan against your situation: scope, integrations and budget.