Anything “smart” is now a common theme in our lives and the same is true for manufacturing. We have smart cars, smart thermostats, smart TVs, etc. and such devices are everywhere in daily use. However, from our experience, the manufacturing industry, specifically industrial products manufacturing companies are still lagging in adopting “Smart Manufacturing” in their production plants. We believe the primary reason is that midsize companies are not ready, neither technologically nor culturally.
Adoption of “Smart Manufacturing” requires organizational changes, change in mindset, and change in business processes. “Smart Manufacturing” is not an IT solution that companies can simply purchase and implement. In other words, this is not something that can be achieved as a one-off project but is a long-term initiative that requires serious investment of time and effort.
Bringing the organizational and mindset change requires development of the next generation workforce. The current shop floor workers need to be educated and trained to trust and rely on data and information. If they don’t trust, they won’t adopt.
How should a manufacturing organization prepare for getting “smarter”? The answer is to start small with a pilot project. Identify one machine or work area that is simple enough to adapt and has significant benefits from a “Smart Manufacturing” pilot. First identify the problems you would like to solve using smart manufacturing. E.g., one of our clients wanted to optimize the consumption of lengths of bar-stock at a saw machine. Once the problem is defined, identify the actions / functions that must be made “smart”. In the above example, the client identified that sensors needed to be installed on the saw machine, which is possible to automatically measure the remaining length of the bar, send the length to SAP which calculates the cut length of the next cut and sends a command to the saw machine to move the bar to the appropriate cut spot. This bi-directional communication between the saw machine and SAP allowed determination of optimized cut length resulting in cost savings for the company.
Using a pilot allows the organization to learn from experiences with relatively small investment. The shop floor employees get hands on experience, and they start trusting the solution. This helps build further trust in the data and information. This goes a long way in extending the solution to other machines and work areas. The pilot also allows the company to test its infrastructure like wi-fi connection, network stability, sensing devices set-up, etc. The organization also learns what kind of changes are needed for the machine e.g., if any changes are needed to the PLCs, material flow or the material itself, etc.
Using this experience and knowledge, the organization is now able to extend the solution to other machines. It is possible to prepare the machines and personnel in advance for the changes needed to adopt a “Smart Manufacturing” solution.
