Case Study: HONDA Motorcycles plant modernized production-line monitoring (with KingSCADA)

KingSCADA-Connected Fanuc, Mitsubishi, and Brother CNC machines with PLCs through a scalable SCADA platform for unified production monitoring and reporting.

A legacy, Java-based monitoring setup at a Honda motorcycles plant in India was replaced with a scalable SCADA platform that unified CNCs, PLCs, and I/O links, added real-time and historical trends, alarms, automated shift reports, and made future expansion simple.

The plant was stuck with a fragmented monitoring setup: Fanuc CNCs were monitored through MT-LINKi and a NoSQL store, but many CNCs (from other vendors) and independent PLCs and edge devices weren’t unified or logged. Daily status checks were manual and the Java dashboard in use wasn’t scalable — adding lines meant heavy cost and effort.

What they needed

• One single platform to collect data from CNCs (Fanuc, Mitsubishi, Brother), PLCs (Mitsubishi), and many I/O links (TURCK).

• Real-time monitoring, historical trending, alarms, reporting and data archiving.

• A system that could easily scale to additional lines and plant areas without rework.

The Solution

The solution was implemented by WellinTech using their KingSCADA product installed on a main server in the plant room. KingSCADA acted as the central server, collecting data over MELSEC/CCLink, FOCAS (Ethernet), Modbus TCP and other protocols, writing to an internal DB and MS SQL for reporting and archive.

System highlights & specs

HONDA Production Lines Monitoring Sstem

• OS / Server: Windows Server 2016

• Devices connected: PLC (Mitsubishi) — 17; CNCs (Fanuc / Mitsubishi / Brother) — 23; I/O links (TURCK) — 42.

• Protocols: MELSEC / CCLink, FOCAS Ethernet, ModbusTCP.

• Tags / Screens / DB: 500+ I/Os, ~170 operator screens, KingSCADA internal DB + MS SQL Server for storage.

• Capabilities added: parameter monitoring, real-time & historical trending, alarms handling, custom reporting, data archiving/logging, auto/manual email with daily shift report

  
  

System Architecture

As shown in the PDF diagram, multiple production-line controllers feed into the plant LAN and a switch, which links to the KingSCADA server and SQL/internal DB. This design makes it straightforward to add lines or plant areas later.

Operator UX & dashboards

KingSCADA delivered ~170 screens: line overviews, machine parameter panels, multi-panel real-time trend charts, historical trend windows, alarm dashboards and shift-status reports. The system also supports auto-triggered emails (daily shift attachments) and manual emailing from the UI.

Results & benefits

• Unified visibility: All CNCs and PLCs are now visible in a single platform, eliminating manual status verification across systems.

• Scalability: Adding new lines is “a few clicks” in KingSCADA — no Java rework or expensive custom dashboards.

• Time & cost savings: Reduced manual checks, automated reporting, faster troubleshooting and simplified future expansions.

• Next steps planned: The plant intends to roll out OEE monitoring for CNCs using KingSCADA (planned in the next project phase).