Volume 4 Issue 4 April 2022
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Welcome to Industree 4.0 for April, 2022, exclusively sponsored by SAP.
SAP
By Kai Aldinger, SAP
5 Actions For A Sustainable Supply Chain 
Only two years into the “Decade of Action,” we’re beginning to see what happens when companies don’t pivot to more sustainable business practices.

Customers, employees, and investors are increasingly rejecting those that are laggards in establishing sustainability goals. They’re turning instead to their more planet-friendly competition — those that offer even more recyclable products, or packaging, manufacture with ethically sourced or repurposed materials, and deliver products with minimal carbon emissions or waste.

Climate change, circular economy, ESG and sustainability have become business priorities and our global supply chains sit right in the middle of these challenges—as a major contributor to the problems, and a great area of focus to take action. As many companies embark on their sustainability journey, here is a five-step action plan to consider:

Establish a Sustainable Business Strategy

It’s imperative that companies make sustainability central to their overall business strategy. To begin the process, business leaders must examine all functions of their network and identify sustainability weaknesses within and outside of their organization.

For example, supply chains are a major contributor to waste carbon emissions and are therefore a major area of opportunity for improvements. Creating measurable goals to improve a company’s supply chain (e.g., 25% reduction in manufacturing waste to landfills, or becoming carbon neutral by 2030), can restore the confidence of customers, investors, employees, and other stakeholders, that the organization is making active strides to become more sustainable.

Embed Sustainable Data into Business Processes and Networks

Once initial goals are set, business leaders must then measure their performance and use data captured across the supply chain to refine their operations. Sustainability must extend from the design to the end of life or into the next life of a product: from the design of products, the sourcing of raw materials, manufacturing of goods, all the way to last-mile logistics, and even to product usage, returns and recycling processes.

Having sustainability data from within an organization and across the network of partners will also help keep companies accountable, as it can be easily shared with suppliers, shareholders, industry associations, regulators, and customers to ensure they are meeting the sustainability goals they’ve set forth.

Manage Carbon and Climate Exposure Throughout the Supply Chain

After an initial data capture, supply chain leaders should then make sure they are accounting for and managing climate-related emissions across all parts of their supply chain, which includes suppliers, contract manufacturers, logistics service providers and other trading partners.

This is no small feat – a lack of visibility across a company’s supply chain is typically the reason why business leaders struggle to manage the total carbon footprint of products. By employing technology to provide the visibility they need to see across their supply chain, business leaders can then take actions to reduce their company’s end-to-end carbon footprint.

Making changes to the supply chain may seem like a large undertaking, but it will undoubtedly pay off in the long run with a more loyal customer base.

Embrace Circularity and Become Regenerative

The use of technology can help companies reduce, reuse, recycle and use reclaimed materials to minimize waste and ultimately adopt a circular business model. Accenture projects that by 2030, circular economy strategies powered by digital technologies will present up to $4.5 trillion in new economic growth opportunities for companies.

An example of a company embracing circularity is Mondi. The company states its “entire value chain is geared towards sustainability, with a customer-oriented “EcoSolutions" approach to environmentally friendly packaging solutions. By 2025 the company has a stated goal of having all packaging solutions to be reusable, recyclable or compostable.

Another example is Colgate-Palmolive. It pledged to use 100 percent recyclable, reusable, or compostable materials for its consumer packaging by 2025 and reduce its use of virgin plastic. Technology enables Colgate-Palmolive to access data up and down its supply chain, which has been integral to the ongoing creation of new, sustainable products.

To achieve circularity and become regenerative, companies must design products with their end of life in mind. R&D leaders and product designers should ask themselves questions, such as ‘how will the product be refurbished, repurposed, reused or returned to the earth, and ensure that non-biodegradable packaging materials ends up in oceans or a landfill. We can leverage sensors to track which products are causing damage to the atmosphere, and feed that back into the design process for future products to help meet our corporate commitments.

Prioritize People Across the Supply Chain

When rolling out a sustainable business strategy, companies must have buy-in and support from the entire workforce. This starts with respecting the workforce, creating a diverse and safe space, placing an emphasis on human rights, equality, environmental health and safety, and providing professional development opportunities for talent, such as training and reskilling programs. Additionally, business leaders have an obligation to establish partnerships with suppliers, contract manufacturers, and logistics providers that share these values.

The prosperity of our environment can’t be restored and ultimately preserved by one organization alone – sustainability is a team effort. We are at an inflection point for business leaders just starting their sustainability journey, motivating them to take an active stance. It will likely take society years to make substantial progress, but business leaders taking steps to prioritize their green line just as much as their bottom line will ultimately go a long way in addressing the world’s greatest environmental issues.

To learn more about how design and manufacturing contribute to more sustainable supply chains download the new Sustainable Supply Chain whitepaper here.
Industry 5.0?
By Pat Dixon, PE, PMP

Vice President of Automation, Pulmac Systems International (pulmac.com)
Over the past 3 years I have explained in these articles what Industry 4.0 is. We are about 12 years into the inflection point from Industry 4.0 and many facilities are not near the implementation and promise of this new era, and there remains confusion on what this era even means.
 
In the midst of this confusion and flux, we now have people saying we are in or on the cusp of Industry 5.0. An internet search of “Industry 5.0” will yield a lot of results. Some people even claim to be the father of Industry 5.0. How can Industry 5.0 have been birthed before Industry 4.0 has been realized?  

The list of Industry 5.0 attributes seems to include the following:

  • Eliminating waste
  • The first industrial evolution created by humans
  • People working alongside robots and smart machines
  • Robots helping humans work better and faster by leveraging advanced technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data
  • Industry 5.0 is aimed at supporting – not superseding – humans
  • Industry 5.0 is about finding the optimal balance of efficiency and productivity
  • Empower people to realize the basic human urge to express themselves - even if they have to pay a premium price.
  • More anti-industrial than industrial.
  • Collaborative robots provide the tools companies need to produce the personalized products consumers demand today
  • The end of automation - but an "end" that is enabled at least in part by robotic automation.
  • It gives workers jobs that are more meaningful than factory jobs have been in well over a century.
  • Governments around the world and the leading high-tech companies need to define a framework to define the rules for machine intelligence
  • Lights out business processes, highly automated manufacturing, self-managed supply chains
  • Aims beyond efficiency and productivity as the sole goals, and reinforces the role and the contribution of industry to society.
  • It places the wellbeing of the worker at the center of the production process and uses new technologies to provide prosperity beyond jobs and growth while respecting the production limits of the planet.
  • It complements the existing "Industry 4.0" approach by specifically putting research and innovation at the service of the transition to a sustainable, human-centric and resilient industry.
  • It is good for our planet as it favors circular production models and support technologies that make the use of natural resources more efficient.
  • Revising existing value chains and energy consumption practices can also make industries more resilient against external shocks, such as Covid-19 crisis.
  • 100% of companies are mission-driven and value-based; profit is a by-product
  • Virtual reality technology will create a new economy in the Metaverse
  • Powered by widespread implementation of Industry 4.0 manufacturing
  • Humans are working fewer hours and may not need to work at all
  • Environmental, Political, and Social Sustainability at the forefront of design
 
Is that clear?
 
While much of what people say about Industry 5.0 has some common themes, it seems like a collection of aspirational dreams. These are very nice dreams, but they are not necessarily new. For example, if the common theme of Industry 5.0 is that companies are driven by mission and value, and profits is a byproduct, John Mackey (founder of Whole Foods) wrote about that in his 2013 book “Conscious Capitalism”.
 
I have searched for a concise definition of Industry 5.0, and it eludes me. Any explanation I have seen of Industry 5.0 seems to resemble a room littered with toys after the kids are done playing. This cannot be how we define industrial eras.
 
In school, students take exams, and they are graded according to a consistent classification. Grade A might be above 92%, B above 85%, C above 75%, D above 60%, and F below 60%. The system is consistent in using the same metric (% of correct answers) to classify.
 
Any classification system needs to be consistent to make sense. That is why the “Industry 4.0 Lexicon”, which I addressed in my previous article, uses a consistent classification of defining industrial eras. That metric is the inflection point of an empowering technology applied throughout industry, as follows:
Many will disagree with this approach, but in contrast to every other approach it is the only one I have seen that is consistent. You can easily determine which industrial era is being described. If facilities are using steam but there is no electricity, it is Industry 1. If a facility has PLCs, HMI, and historians but no connectivity to MES and ERP, it is Industry 3.
 
If Industry 5.0 has begun or is on the horizon, what is the inflection point in empowerment that will be applied throughout industry? Can it be a single word as shown in the table above, or does it need to be a verbose treatise or list of bullet points? How would you distinguish an Industry 5.0 facility from an Industry 4.0 facility?
 
I take no issue with any firm aspiring to the goals of Industry 5.0 or “Conscious Capitalism”. I am quite inclined to support it. However, lets not contribute to the Tower of Babel we find in industry by coming up with cool new ways to explain aspirations.
Communications is for the Birds
At the end of the day, Industry 4.0 is about communications...what data, from where, to where, and what does it mean? Oh, and get it to me quickly, say at light speed. We get wrapped up in the mechanics of Industry 4.0, but this is what it is about.

I have built many relationships over my lifetime, but I have to say one of the most interesting is that which I have with a couple of groups of Mennonites, one in Tennessee and one in Ohio. They call us who are not Mennonites the "English." And we English have many misconceptions about the Mennonites and their cousins, the Amish. For instance, we may think they are stay-at-home folks. Nothing could be further from the truth. I think they must keep the interstate bus systems running. They are always going from one community to another by bus.

Other than that, their main form of communications is the postal service. I keep up communications with several of them via the postal service, and I enjoy writing letters again like I did when I was younger.

Yet, even the Mennonites are full of surprises.

Saturday, 9 April 22, we were in Tennessee having lunch with our Mennonite friends there, then planning on driving from there to Ohio in the afternoon to spend a couple of day with our Mennonite friends in Ohio. After lunch, they asked if we minded doing them a favor. We said, no problem, what is it?

They brought our a pair of homing pigeons and asked if we minded taking them up to Kentucky and letting them loose. It is part of the pigeons' training process. We said we would be delighted to do so, and they put them in a box for us.

When we got to Kentucky, a couple of hours later, we stopped at a rest area and freed the birds.

They immediately ascended to about 300 feet (100 meters) and started circling very rapidly (they can fly 60 miles per hour). They first went in circles one direction, then the other. They called out to each other. They did this for about fifteen minutes; it is part of their orientation to get aligned for flying home.

We were told once they get their bearings, they fly in a straight line for home. If the distance is long, they will stop and roost for the night. As we were only about 120 miles from their home, they likely made it home that night, but I will have to wait for a letter from the Mennonites to find out.

As I was watching as they circled, I was thinking about Industry 4.0. Those pigeon brains can weigh no more than a few grams. But the processing power in those few grams is unbelievably powerful. We should aspire that our systems become as powerful on a unit mass basis as that of the homing pigeons. I don't think we are there yet despite what Pat Dixon says about ERA 0...
How Does the IoT Reduce Manufacturing Downtime?
By Emily Newton
Unplanned manufacturing outages can be significantly costly and cause massive workflow disruptions. However, the Internet of Things (IoT) can help companies reduce manufacturing downtime in numerous ways. Although using the technology requires financial and time-related investments, the associated positive outcomes are often worthwhile.
The Future of IoT: What Should We Expect?
IOT For All
In today’s world, we can create customized customer experiences with connected device ecosystems just about anywhere, including (but not limited to) our houses, cars, family care homes, and factories. However, customer demands are always changing: businesses and their engineers need to innovate while also establishing trust, as connected devices come with many privacy concerns. So, what should you be looking out for in the future of IoT?
Where to Start with Robotics and Automation? A State Manufacturers’ Toolkit Has Answers
By Geoff Lipnevicius
If manufacturers have learned anything during the last several years, it is that the stakes of doing business have been permanently raised.
Locus Robotics Unveils New Warehouse Automation Robots
IOT World Today
Autonomous warehouse robotics firm Locus has unveiled two new robots: Vector and Max.

The new bots are designed for use cases relating to e-commerce, case and pallet picking and supporting heavier payloads.
Industree 4.0 is exclusively sponsored by SAP