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Perhaps progress is too slow?
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As we inaugurate Industree 4.0, I was looking back thorough some old materials. The following is largely a column I wrote for Nip Impressions on 14 Jun 2010, called "Tech Changes affecting your career now" (it is also available on Amazon.com in Books, "Raising EBITDA, the Lessons of Nip Impressions, vol. 1"). That was 8 ½ years ago, yet there as some ideas here that are just coming to fruition or are still aspirations. I hope Industree 4.0 will motivate the suppliers and manufacturers to adopt those that are still dreams. Keep in mind the age of most of these comments-see if you can identify those that are out of date.
First, we will start with applications, or "apps" for smart phones which are growing by leaps and bounds. This is happening primarily in the retail sector, but we are starting to see some valuable ones in industry as well. Unfortunately, there is not a widespread standard for these just yet (those written for iPhones have to be converted to Java Script in order to be used on Android phones), but they are proliferating.
Already you can have the entire periodic table of the elements on your phone, as well as pump calculation algorithms, scientific calculators and more.
So what is right around the corner? Anything your data collection system collects now should be available in easy to use form on your smart phones. Ask your suppliers of equipment and services to include these in your quotations the next time you buy software.
As far as security is concerned, with the GPS in smart phones, you should be able to set the transmission of data only to approved phones within a certain perimeter of the machine, or other places of your choosing. I have an app, for instance, that automatically puts my phone in silent mode within 200 feet of the church I attend. If I can get that for free, the reverse should certainly be available for you.
Simply, any data you can receive on your computer, you should be able to receive on your phone. Again, ask your custom software providers to include this in their next quote.
Of course, the next step after that is to be able to use your phone to control processes. This may be a bit more ticklish and needs to be thought through, but it may actually reverse the trend of the last couple of decades of putting operators in a control room. After all, the control room came into being in order to find a place with a forgiving environment to put all the computers that run your processes (or, before that, all the gauges and so forth). If their controls are in their hands, the operators can be up close and personal with the process if necessary. Control rooms may come to look more like conference rooms with the participants coming and going as necessary.
As a 2018 aside, we covered this abolishment of control rooms at a Light Green Machine Institute Conference several years ago; today it will be possible if one has the will to do it.
Next, let's think about customer service. If you are manufacturing printing grades or board grades, your product goes to a printing plant or some sort of box plant. Offer to install appropriate sensors on your customer's lines to monitor the performance of your product. Equip your tech service people with smart phones that can see this data and receive set point alarms. With everyone giving appropriate permissions, your tech service people can immediately text message the operators on the customers' production lines with real time problem solutions. All this data can be recorded to be reconciled in returns and allowances (R & As). This should result in better performance for your customers and fewer R & As for you.
Smart phones also can be used, if you so desire, to be "big brother." Equip all employees with smart phones and your hourly employees no longer need to "punch in." The phone will tell you exactly when they arrive on site and where they spend their entire shift. This capability will be particularly useful in analyzing maintenance activities (how much time did the mechanics spend at the job site, how many trips did they have to make back and forth to stores, etc.).
Of course, also of use to maintenance would be using the GPS and barcode reader (my phone does both right now) to allow a maintenance worker at a piece of equipment to immediately pull up drawings, instruction manuals and every other imaginable piece of data on that equipment right on the spot, automatically. And, again, with the right software, a push of the button should allow this person to talk directly to the equipment manufacturer's support people, wherever they may be.
Some of these ideas are available right now. I would be surprised if anything in this column takes as long as five years to become commonplace. Your entire employee base is about to be freed from a location-specific computer.
Well, I have been surprised how long it has taken. I just this year toured my first supplier's manufacturing plant that was paperless-large screen computers in assembly stations had replaced printed drawings for the assembly teams.
However, I have been a bit deceptive, placing this article at the beginning of what we hope will be a long narrative about Industree 4.0. For much of the discussion today, while about moving, storing and analyzing large amounts of data electronically, it is more process driven than my old article above may describe. Nevertheless, all the concepts here belong in the same family. And they will all have fits and starts and require angst at times on the parts of human beings in order to assimilate into the daily routine.
Welcome to a brave new world.
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First in the forest industry
to utilise augmented reality and
5G technology in mill maintenance
Stora Enso has been developing augmented reality (AR) and 5G technology solutions together with Telia. The utilisation of augmented reality was first tested at Stora Enso's Oulu mill where real-time information is being used in mill maintenance.
The application of augmented reality and virtual models will in the future enable the more rapid use of, for example, maintenance information at Stora Enso mills. Using a virtual model of a machine and real-time data concerning information points, can improve the operational reliability of the mills.
"Stora Enso has an extensive digitalisation programme, which aims to increase sales and boost our operations on our journey to replace fossil-based materials. Through our digitalisation programme, we have become pioneers in our industry in the utilisation of new technology," says Teemu Salmi, Stora Enso's CIO and Head of Digitalisation.
Through the new technology, all necessary information is easily and visually at the disposal of experts in real-time, regardless of physical location. The nearing introduction of fast 5G technology together with AR- and VR technology and 360° views will enable real-time and rapid utilisation by experts between different units, irrespective of geographical distance.
"With our pilots in Oulu, we have explored the area where IoT (Internet of Things) and 5G solutions will most likely produce the first breakthroughs in introducing new, more effective processes. Solutions based on the collection, transfer and analysis of real-time data are the key to renewing industrial processes", says Janne Koistinen, Head of 5G program at Telia Finland."
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The Internet of Things
is with us
The terms Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) or also Industry 4.0. and Smart Factory are omnipresent nowadays, and not just in the industrial environment. Companies' expectations of greater plant efficiency and increased profitability by networking machines and applying such technologies as Smart Sensors and Big Data Analytics have high priority.
As the IIoT will be a core topic in the future to maintain and enhance the ability to compete, ANDRITZ has combined its innovative IoT (Internet of Things) solutions, which is field-proven in many reference plants, with immediate effect under the technology brand "Metr
is - Industrial IoT Solutions".
Metris technologies are the very latest state-of-the-art in the IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) or Industry 4.0 sector and can be fully tailored to individual customer requirements.
The Metris brand name is a combination of the words metis - which in Greek mythology stands for practical, complex implicit knowledge - and matrix, i.e. arranging numerical data cybernetically to control and adjust machines.
What is Metris?
Based on extensive and long-term experience as a supplier of technologies and systems for various branches of industry, ANDRITZ offers a broad portfolio of intelligent, digital solutions that provide significant help to customers in achieving their production and corporate goals.
- Enhancing plant efficiency and profitability
- Optimizing the use of resources
- Constant and highest product quality
- Avoiding production downtime
- Maximum user-friendliness, for example easy control via smartphone or tablet PC
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Despite enthusiasm for digital manufacturing, few companies have realized its potential at scale, according to our new survey. Six success factors can help.
The global race for innovation leadership in digital manufacturing is picking up pace: two-thirds of industrial companies worldwide say that digitizing the production value chain is one of their highest priorities (Exhibit 1). That's according to our latest research in the area, which we explore in a new report, Digital manufacturing-escaping pilot purgatory.
To achieve this goal, companies are actively pursuing a broad range of digital-manufacturing use cases in three areas (Exhibit 2):
- Connectivity. This enables the flow of relevant information to the right decision makers in real time. Examples include digital performance management and the use of augmented reality to communicate interactive work instructions and standard operating procedures.
- Intelligence. Use cases relate to applying advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to an array of data to generate new insights and enable better decision making. Examples include predictive maintenance, digital quality management, and AI-driven demand forecasting.
- Flexible automation. In this area, new robotic technologies are leveraged to improve the productivity, quality, and safety of operational processes. Examples include autonomous guided vehicles and using cobots for assembly processes.
Despite this focus and enthusiasm, McKinsey's collaboration with the World Economic Forum on
the future of production
has shown that many companies are experiencing "pilot purgatory" in which they have significant activity under way but are not yet seeing meaningful bottom-line benefits from this (Exhibit 3).
To more fully understand how manufacturers across the globe are approaching their digital-manufacturing transformation and the challenges they are facing, McKinsey conducted its fourth Digital Manufacturing Global Expert Survey (see sidebar, "Overview of McKinsey's Digital Manufacturing Global Expert Survey"). The results of this survey provide interesting insights into how manufacturers' approaches differ across the world, as well as concerning behaviors that are contributing to
pilot purgatory.
In the first part of our report, we share the results our 2018 survey. These show largely continued levels of enthusiasm and prioritization related to capturing benefits from digital manufacturing, with notable acceleration in China and India and regression in Japan. However, while there is significant importance placed on the topic and many pilots have been launched across a range of use cases, less than a third of respondents cite having moved critical use cases-such as digital performance management-into large-scale rollout. At the same time, more than 90 percent of surveyed companies believe that they are either at the forefront of digital manufacturing in their industry or, at least, on par with the competition.
In the report's second part, we offer perspectives on six success factors that manufacturers demonstrating at-scale impact from digital manufacturing are following. These factors span the transformation categories of process, infrastructure, and organization:
Process
- Approach the opportunity "bottom-line-value backward," rather than technology forward.
- Establish a clear vision and change story for how digital manufacturing will create competitive advantage and develop a phased road map and business case.
Infrastructure
- Form an early view on the comprehensive target-state technology stack that is scalable and analytics-enabled and that supports the digital-manufacturing road map.
- Build and lead a focused ecosystem of technology partners to rigorously manage the building of the stack.
Organization
- Drive the transformation from the top (and via profit-and-loss owners) and coordinate implementation widely-do not treat it as an isolated IT implementation effort.
- Get ahead of the capability gap: build the skills to achieve impact and the culture to sustain it.
The move from the current version of factory production to digital manufacturing holds the promise of significant value, and according to the results of McKinsey's 2018 survey, this shift is a top strategic priority for manufacturers across the globe. Despite the importance placed on it, most manufacturers are struggling to take the digital-manufacturing successes they have experienced in limited pilots to a scale that would bring the full benefit of the technology.
A holistic approach to digital manufacturing-one that considers the fundamentals of the organization and the business as much as it focuses on the technology-related factors-can help manufacturers get over the hurdles that stand between pilot success and company-wide rollout.
The good news is that, as demonstrated by several real-world cases, a rollout is not a mystery, and successes exist. These "lighthouses" have the power to help unify a manufacturer's vision of digital manufacturing. The knowledge from these case examples can also help build a solid business case and chart the course for company-wide implementation.
About the authors:
Andreas Behrendt is a partner in McKinsey's Cologne office, Richard Kelly is a partner in the Stamford office, Raphael Rettig is a consultant in the Düsseldorf office, and Sebastian Stoffregen is an associate partner in the Munich office.
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Researchers at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA US,
led by
Yuri Gogotsi
of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, have created ultra-thin radio-frequency (RF) antennas.
Made of titanium carbide using a simple, one-step spray-on technique that reduces the thickness and weight, these antennas
outperform the macro and micro world of metal antennas. They are ideally suited for the rapidly expanding needs of the Internet of Things and will revolutionize data transmission and how remote devices become connected.
In their experiments, the researchers made a 100-nm-thick translucent antenna
that worked at 2.4 GHz, the frequency used for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth applications. They are 200 times better than silver ink antennas when it comes to preserving the quality of radio wave transmission.
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- IIoT, Smart Connected Assets, and the Pulp & Paper Industry
- Why 5G will supercharge Industry 4.0
- Getting to Know Your Co-Bots: Humans' Role in Industry 4.0
- and many more.
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