The digital factory of the future is now fully operational. But the synergies between engineering, operations and IT need to be stronger than ever. In order to create new digital-based business scenarios and create smart factories a wide range of ICT (information and communications technology) tools, methods and environments are needed.
A total global transformation of the industrial sector can be achieved by gathering, sharing and analyzing information, data and knowledge about machining processes on the factory shopfloor in real time and through a cloud-based approach. There must also be support for efficient resource sharing and scalability and accessibility regarding ICT, including systems and software applications.
For manufacturers, increasing the level of automation, combined with the adaptability to handle different manufacturing scenarios efficiently, depends on a variety of factors. These include the configuration, characteristics and availability of manufacturing resources, changes in the production system, efficient mechanisms for data communication, flexible and easy updating of new knowledge in systems combined with proper knowledge management, and functionality that provides ICT security and IP protection.
The 'intelligent' factory
The idea of data collection and analysis is not new to the manufacturing industry. However, leveraging this data effectively is becoming the new basis of competition, creating business value on the shop floor as well as on enterprise level. Manufacturers have always wanted to derive insights from information in order to make better, smarter, real time, fact based decisions, and now they can. But, what is completely different about today's concept of a digital factory is that technology now exists for every participant in the supply chain to interact and work together collaboratively to deliver genuinely 'smart' manufacturing. The age-old structures in which trade is characterized as business-to-business or business-to-consumer will no longer be relevant in the new digital world where connectivity and collaboration are king – all parties involved in a product from conception to delivery will become partners who share knowledge and learn from each other in order to hone the manufacturing process and make it increasingly efficient.
To realize the vision of ´intelligent´ digital factories the underlying challenges have to be understood and tackled. In order to make a process autonomous, the system supporting it needs to possess a certain degree of intelligence. It also needs to be able to sense, communicate, read and understand instructions. Finally, it needs to control, act upon changes and learn.
In order to learn, the system requires the aggregation of data from its environment and the establishment of efficient and reliable models and algorithms for analysis, prediction and control. That data must be captured from different stages of pre-machining process planning, in-machining process behavior and post-machining evaluation and outbound logistics.
In order for the intelligent digital factory to become the norm, however, there are many key challenges that have to be understood and overcome, including efficiency regarding maintenance, release handling and upgrades of software functionality. In essence, the main driving force behind the concept of smart production – and, arguably, the main impediment to its implementation – is data and how to manage it effectively to deliver genuine integration between people, machines and systems. In the 21st century, by far the biggest challenges that manufacturers around the world face in their constant quest for market-leading competitiveness relate to learning and control which require collection, aggregation and processing of data from the environment the system acts in, as well as establishment of efficient and reliable models and algorithms for analysis, prediction and control. This data has to be captured from different stages of pre-machining process planning, from in-machining process behavior and from post-machining evaluation as well as from out-bound logistics (the movement of finished products from the factory to the end user).
Manufacturers capable of achieving these goals will give themselves a significant competitive advantage but first they have to understand the importance of connectivity. No factory will be an island in manufacturing's digital future and among the essential requirements for success will be multi-site collaboration and the ability to create decision-making support tools that can be managed remotely from virtually any device using increasingly powerful online dashboards.
The shift towards digital transformation
Having access to real time data will require manufacturers to take a confident step towards digital transformation – otherwise known as Industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution. This transformation not only involves adoption of ICT but also the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) which is the only end-to-end solution that can deliver genuine human-to-human, machine-to-human and machine-to-machine interaction. Because this level of digital connectivity will capture process data in real time it will ensure seamless interoperability on the shopfloor. In turn, this will enable manufacturers to optimize and evolve production processes, predict failures, trigger maintenance operations, and automatically react to unexpected changes in production requirements.
Essentially, Industry 4.0 is driven by the ability to manage huge volumes of data, also known as 'big data', and incredibly powerful computers that deliver advanced analytics capabilities, as well as boundary-breaking digital-to-physical interactivity.
There is no doubt that intelligent data sharing for smart production is transforming the manufacturing industry and supporting the goal of creating the product as a service. Of course, manufacturing has been improving quality and adopting automation for many years but with this latest industrial revolution what were once ground-breaking future-proof panaceas to every manufacturer's problems are increasingly starting to look tired and outdated. Traditional lean production processes are now being replaced with a network-centric approach to production that combines intelligence with flexibility and strong value chain participation through which information and communication are digitalized.
Vertical and horizontal integration
It is no longer sufficient to install an internet cable into a factory and attach sensors to a production line and be satisfied that all the factory's production facilities are now interconnected. Today's climate demands much more, including the transition from traditional IT to ICT mentioned earlier, operational technology that ensures efficient streaming of data, new techniques of analysis and, above all, massive data storage in the cloud. Also required is direct connection to the very latest business systems, including enterprise resource planning (ERP), product lifecycle management (PLM) and manufacturing execution systems which must all operate on the cloud level.
Another way of looking at how to create the intelligent factory is to say that while huge amounts of data have to be managed, shared and analyzed in real time it also helps to recognize that integration falls into two distinct categories – vertical and horizontal. In the vertical perspective, which involves the integration of solutions, information is captured from small devices on the shopfloor, from machine tools and from embedded sensors, and through the IIoT this data integrates with the factory enterprise level systems mentioned above, namely production planning and resource planning. In the horizontal perspective – which involves the integration of processes – data is managed by the cloud which extends the possibilities for broader collaboration and interaction among all the partners who are delivering their part of the solution, their digital services and systems that constitute an essential element in the production line management process. Another key feature of horizontal integration of data is that new dynamics are created through this digital shift which help to transition traditional value chains into eco system-based chains and so deliver on the promise of having a more productive set of processes.
Conclusion
Greater efficiency, better productivity and higher levels of product quality are all by-products of the digital factory but automation on the shopfloor is only a fraction of the solution. Information and communications technology and cloud-based systems are enabling technologies that will take the manufacturing industry to new levels of efficiency and productivity.
The much more collaborative nature of Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things will open the way for smaller players operating throughout the value chain to become much bigger players as they deliver their solutions through those cloud-based systems. Immediate access to accurate and up-to-date manufacturing system intelligence will mean that companies that embrace the cloud-based approach will have a competitive edge that will be difficult to match.
