Industry 4.0: Towards Smart Manufacturing
Technology is transforming business models. As challenges for the manufacturing industry are growing, manufacturers need to transform. Industry 4.0 is a significant step closer to reality, paving the way to profitable plants with high availability. It takes transformation - digitalization solutions to realize innovation, performance, thereby realizing their own digital enterprise.
'Industry 4.0', 'Industrial Internet', 'Internet of Things', and 'big data' are keywords that figure prominently at every trade fair. Yet, many companies are hesitant to put Industry 4.0 into practice and seem to be waiting for the decisive key technology to arrive.
Against this backdrop, an Industry 4.0 smart manufacturing conclave was organized in New Delhi by Cantier Systems Pte Ltd, Singapore and Acetel Technologies Pvt Ltd, India.
Delivering the welcome address, Alok Varshney, Founder and CEO, Acetel Technologies Pvt Ltd, said that Industry 4.0 has the adoption potential to catapult the manufacturing industry.
The Indian industry cannot shy away from adopting Industry 4.0 standards and practices, which is the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. The country needs to focus on using green technologies and best practices to increase the share of manufacturing in GDP, as underlined by many leading experts in the country.
The government is aiming to increase the share of manufacturing to 25 percent of the GDP from the present 17 percent, with a view of creating millions of jobs and pushing the country's economic growth. To achieve this target, the Indian industry has to adopt Industry 4.0, i.e., smart manufacturing, as it is important to boost manufacturing.
Focus on Industry 4.0
Industry 4.0 is leveraging for efficiency, adaptability and productivity. There are other areas that need special focus including good quality products, alignment of jobs, skilling, perfect supply chain and innovation to benefit the economy holistically.
Industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution integrates the digital and manufacturing world. Technologies moving from electrified to automated, to digitalized manufacturing, such as big data and analytics, autonomous robots, IoT, cyber security and augmented reality are transforming the manufacturing landscape.
This can be the fulcrum to catapult Indian manufacturing to make India a truly global hub. The transmission will require significant economic and social change along with political and institutional frame work.
The "Make in India" initiative is spear heading wider adoption of Industry 4.0. Banking on India's strength in information technology and a large work force of IT professionals, the transformative journey of manufacturing through Industry 4.0 has already begun in the country
Under the government of India's "Smart Cities Mission", the projects to build 100 smart cities across India are being looked upon as the fore runners of the Industry 4.0 environment.
Additionally, the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, along Boeing, is building India's first smart factory in Bengaluru. Bosch will begin smart manufacturing in India by 2018. General Electric (GE) has invested in smart manufacturing ecosystem in India as well.
With so much more Industry 4.0 specific information on technology and its benefits for the Indian manufacturing industry especially for the SME sector manufacturing enterprises, I am sure this informative seminar shall prepare business owners and executives to innovate new strategies and business models and lead their organizations in the digital age.
Leading for quality
BC Rigg, COO, Cantier Systems Pte Ltd, said, "Stability is one of the key pre-requisites for smart manufacturing." Over the last three decades, Rigg and his team have served discriminating semiconductor companies. He added, "How the leaders lead, becomes a company value, which enables the success in quality."
The components of quality in manufacturing are the people, the equipment and the systems. Leaders lead by example. Everyone watches the leaders in the factory. The examples that leaders demonstrate are the corporate values and get emulated.
There are six values that enable success in quality. These are:
* Do you have a substantive, meaningful job that contributes to the success of the company?
* Do you know the on-the-job behaviours and have the knowledge base to be successful?
* Has the training been identified and been made available to continuously upgrade your skills?
* Do you have a personal career plan, and is it exciting, achievable, and being acted upon?
* Do you receive candid, positive & negative, feedback at least every 30 days that is helpful in achieving your personal career plan?
* Is there appropriate sensitivity to your personal circumstances, gender, and/or cultural heritage so that such issues do not detract from your personal career plan?
The result achieved was: the employee satisfaction rose, as did employee retention. There is also a need to create an island of discipline in the sea of opportunity. Simply put, you got to have discipline, if you wish to excel!
It is sometimes necessary to benchmark (steal) good ideas from all sources. You also need to catch those people doing things right! There must be data-driven decisions. Leaders also need to make quality the No. 1 priority.
How can you do that? One way is to hire the best people, and even people better than yourself! You should also prepare for replacements, as and when they come up. Rigg added there was a need to celebrate diversity as you build your direct response teams.
Everybody should be rowing the boat in the same direction toward one set of goal. "Effective" communication regarding perfect quality work must occur at new employee orientation/regularly. To communicate this effectively, you need to know your audience and get inside their heads.
Focus on manufacturing equipment performance
Manufacturing equipment performance is typically the single biggest contributor to consistent product quality (> people). Today's manufacturing equipment are, in many cases, programmable robots, whose repeatability and reproducibility far exceed levels of human capability. This is true, 'if' the robots are properly programmed, operated and maintained. Quality products need not be produced on the "latest generation" or the most expensive equipment.
With the level of equipment complexity we are seeing today, the Maintenance & Equipment Engineering (MEE) Team training and execution must be the best. As you move toward the smart factory, you move toward more human independent controls.
"Automated controls" represent a new risk, unless they are part of your preventive maintenance program. A software tool (EMMS) has been a very successful approach. Preventive maintenance can be performed based upon calendar, usage or other methods (vibration sensors, etc.).
The unscheduled maintenance time intervals and technician performance can be closely monitored to help identify ways to improve the maintenance process. The Electronic Maintenance Management Software (EMMS) helps with accurate data regarding equipment problems and solutions. This leads to focused resources and continuous improvement.
If you have any customer quality issues to deal with, see that these can be predicted and dealt with, and prevented. Prevention is based on going down lower in the event chain Quality incidents and process engineering time have been wasted trying to fix the manufacturing processes that were never properly characterized.
There is a need to characterize, optimize and control the process right from the start! Rigg recommends using the M/PCpS methodology. It is a step-wise analytical investigation of a machine and process.
The machine status monitoring system (MSMS) network architecture is an electronic system. Customer quality issues can be predicted and prevented. The manufacturing self-audit system (MSA) prevents any quality incidents from happening.
MES an enabler for Industry 4.0
The Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is an enabler for Industry 4.0. MES benefits include:
* Real time, believable data about your factory, leading to data driven decisions.
* Better lot planning, more in depth understanding of line flow.
* Better product traceability.
* Reduced manufacturing cycle time and late customer shipments.
* More accurate/meaningful manufacturing and engineering data.
* Better understanding of equipment utilization and OEE.
* Reduced rework and scrap.
* Reduced manufacturing costs.
* It is an enabler to paperless manufacturing.
How long does it take, and how many people are needed to do the data mining required/track down the root cause and affected product in a quality accident? How many weeks or months and how many people does it take, to pull together the data needed for your ISO, QS or TS certification or recertification audits?
Most importantly, how many of you can know the total value of your inventory as of 8:00 am this morning? The ability to react quickly when the unexpected happens, matters most. It is your confidence -- the ability to tell any one of your superiors exactly what is going on in your factory!
What makes Industry 4.0 smart?
Brandon Lee, Chairman, Automation Group, SMF, Singapore, and Country Manager, Applied Tech Systems Pte Ltd, spoke on 'What makes Industry 4.0 Smart'.
There are four levels of Industry 4.0 -- namely, digitization, standardization, intelligence and control, and smart manufacturing.
Industry 4.0 starts from smart factories! This includes smart mobility, power, building, logistics, etc. New technologies, such as analytics, big data, IoT, cloud, etc., has made us switch to Internet based thinking. The product, process, information, services and platform, integrates all of this.
Smart handling and flexibility allows mixed model manufacturing system. There needs to be an identification of different production units to perform correct operations. There should also be a quick changeover of operating instruction to PC centralized production machines or their operators.
In Industry 4.0, the industrial order placed should be self-organized, and have self-maintaining assets. Self-directing materials are next. There is a need to have exception-triggered handling. There should also be intelligent reporting agents running 24x7x365.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is very important here. You can have a system that can reconfigure and decide the improvement program for a particular production line,
How do we start production? For starters, look at the implications for manufacturing. You should be hitting nominals, first time, and every time. There should be increased volumes through flowing supply chains. Tomorrow's smart digitization involves self-learning and self-healing.
Let us look at a to-do list for smart manufacturing. First, review the business structure for future market strategy. Establish the evolution milestones for the journey. Nurture new culture around new vision. Address the skills gap for the knowledge workers. Build partnerships to support the new company vision. Evolve the IT infrastructure. Digital transformation leads to business transformation.
Industry 4.0 aligned manufacturing solutions
Prabakar P Selvam, Founder and CEO, Cantier Systems Pte. Ltd, spoke on 'Industry 4.0 Aligned Manufacturing Solutions'. There are four levels of Industry 4.0:
* Digitization
* Standardization
* Intelligence and control
* Smart manufacturing.
Lean: Simply put, completing jobs on time using the least amount of inventory and WIP possible.
Six Sigma: A Six Sigma process produces 3.4 defects/million. The DMAIC methodology is used to drive manufacturing process towards Six Sigma.
TPM: It is a methodology aimed at forming a corporate culture focused on maximizing the efficiency of the overall production systems through teaming and empowerment. The TPM metrics are MTBF, MTBA and OEE.
He added that the key benefits of MES are:
* Control shop floor operations
* Meaningful manufacturing and engineering data
* Improved product traceability
* Reduced manufacturing costs
* Reduced manufacturing cycle time
* Better understanding of equipment utilization
* An enabler to paperless manufacturing.
The Cantier MES is a configurable and highly scalable software that includes real-time operations, quality management and maintenance management in a single application. MES provides manufacturers total control over their shop floor.
The Cantier ERP One is designed to help small and medium (SME) manufacturers in managing and controlling their manufacturing activities from shop floor to shop floor as a single integrated solution at an affordable price. It can be installed and used anywhere, on any device.
