Industry 4.0 solutions like IIoT, Machine Learning, Cloud, have started to revolutionize the manufacturing and the industry experts have started to realize the complete potential of the future digital transformation services, technologies to produce more at reduced cost and time. Embracing the digital transformation (or partnering with a branded IoT app development company) is no more a choice for the manufacturing industry but a must today.

 

To begin with, have you ever visited a power plant in recent times? The number of personnel on the floor is hardly 5. A couple of people, operating a little away from the plant, watching a number of displays and light bulbs would be ‘quietly’ monitoring the entire production process. In fact, you would almost be greeted with an eerie silence, except for the hum of the turbines.

Now, contrast that with a traditional manufacturing plant – the number of moving parts (literally and figuratively) make the shop floor a beehive of activity. What if the traditional shop floor can also be managed and monitored with quiet confidence and outstanding efficiency – by connecting machines, systems and people seamlessly.

A recent report from Statista reveals that by 2020, Discrete Manufacturing, Transportation & Logistics and Utilities industries are projected to spend $40B each on IoT platforms, systems, and services.

 

Manufacturing starts on the shop floor. It’s where material moves, the product is created, ultimately, where the work gets done. Every day, new devices and equipment are providing manufacturers with new opportunities for innovation and connection. In the entire world of shop floor automation, the trend (nay a wholesale revolution) is a smart factory.

Deloitte Insights on The smart factory – Responsive, adaptive, connected manufacturing says, “The smart factory represents a leap forward from more traditional automation to a fully connected and flexible system – one that can use a constant stream of data from connected operations and production systems to learn and adapt to new demands.

A true smart factory can integrate data from system-wide physical, operational, and human assets to drive manufacturing, maintenance, inventory tracking, digitization of operations through the digital twin, and other types of activities across the entire manufacturing network.

The result can be a more efficient and agile system, less production downtime, and a greater ability to predict and adjust to changes in the facility or broader network, possibly leading to better positioning in the competitive marketplace.”

The technologies driving this revolution are of course Industrial IoT (Internet of Things), Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. According to a projection by Cisco, manufacturing will account for 27% of the projected $14.4 trillion IoT market between 2013 and 2022, with smart factories contributing $1.95 trillion of the total value at stake in the same time-frame.

Let us look at how different areas of the shop floor, from operations to management, are being impacted by the new technologies, especially IoT and Cloud. Find out how shop floor automation will help manufacturing improve overall equipment efficiency, resulting in improved productivity.

Plan data and Data-Driven Decision Making

The use of computers on the shop floor is not a new phenomenon. Though manufacturers have had access to data collected on the plant floor, till now, it has typically been locked away in proprietary manufacturing software silos. The shop floor analytics helps the manufacturers improve operations by leaps and bounds. 

With industrial IoT solutions, it is now far easier and faster to collect and manage large amounts of manufacturing data not just in a single factory, but across multiple production sites through the cloud. And, when combined with analytics, companies will gain better insights, allowing them to optimize plant operations, reduce defects and perform preventative maintenance. Simply put, IoT in manufacturing has completely transformed the way shop floor functions.

Preventive Maintenance for Data Analytics and Foresight

Typically, in any shop floor, processes would be in place to divert production in the case of machinery failure. However, there would still associate downtime and revenue/profitability implications. Through the use of sensors, IoT and analytics it is possible to predict and prevent catastrophic failure on large-scale plant floor equipment, like boilers or compressors.

Organizations can more effectively schedule maintenance and plan for outages, order inventory and schedule people, aiming at minimal or zero impact on production. Add to this machine learning capability; you can measure conditions like input flow and pressure settings, and determine whether a piece of equipment is running at optimal performance, including consumption of energy.

Alastair Orchard of Siemens notes that one of the factors that have stopped us in the past from delivering digital goodness to the customer is the relatively laborious task of equipping factories with all the necessary sensors and getting data organized and contextualized so it is available for simulation and analytics. According to him, “IoT allows us to sprinkle devices around the factory quickly and cost-effectively to find out what’s going on without going through the multiyear process of reorganizing the shop floor.”

By integrating sensor equipment, machine learning, and analytics capabilities, with IoT as the base, preventive maintenance solutions are now able to accurately pinpoint the root cause of problems, helping customers avoid unnecessary plant floor shutdowns for bogus alerts.

Optimization and Reliability

Having automated workflows, synchronization of assets improved tracking and scheduling, and optimized energy consumption means that today, a smart shop floor/factory can increase yield, uptime, and quality, as well as reduce costs and waste. The nominal manual intervention increases reliability. Remote equipment management, including setting specific limits and parameters, allows for significant savings in energy and costs.

Business Intelligence

By integrating shop floor decisions and insights with the rest of the supply chain, sales & marketing, and broader enterprise through the IoT ecosystem, organizations can not only fundamentally change production processes, but also enhance relationships with suppliers and customers.

Is your shop floor really smart? Are you able to track your employee’s and machine’s efficiency? Well, if not get started with our shop floor automation solution.