Thankfully talk of a post-industrial society is on the wane and even the tide of offshoring manufacturing that has been taking place over the last 20 years is, in some cases, on the turn. Nevertheless, once a manufacturing process is mature and labour costs become the only significant variable, there will be pressure to move production to lower wage cost countries. Lowering wages in the UK is not a sustainable option, so manufacturing is under the hammer and needs a different paradigm to take it forward.
David Cameron, speaking alongside Angela Merkel at the 2014 CeBIT trade show in Hannover made a significant observation: ‘This is a world on fast forward. A world of permanent technological revolution. And in this world, countries like the UK and Germany will only succeed if we have a relentless drive for new ideas and innovations.’
Innovation was the foundation of the industrial revolution. Water and steam powered the first phase of industrialisation, electrification and the production line was the second wave and then, half a century ago, PLC’s gave us the ability to store manufacturing instructions to give flawless repetition. We are now on the entering the fourth industrial revolution – the age of the Smart Factory.
The terminology varies, the Germans call it Industry 4 and Americans call it the Industrial Internet. Whatever you call it, networking shop-floor operations and the Internet of things (IoT) applied to the workshop will have a big impact.
Computerisation permeates many facets of business and manufacturing, but is only now being used to network the shop floor to mirror operations in real time to provide immediate data on every aspect of performance. This is a deeply enabling technology. No longer is production monitoring a historic process and learning through feedback a slow and stuttering progression (assuming error data is captured for action and improvement in the first place).
In the Smart Factory data is constantly available on real-time performance. Material shortages, machine outages, quality issues, longer than expected machine cycle times, any aspect of sub-optimal performance, is immediately apparent. Empowered managers can see inefficiencies and intervene immediately to rectify them.
Every manufacturer is different, so the software that replicates the manufacturing process needs the flexibility and adaptability to capture and process different types of data, presenting reports and information to everyone on the team in actionable formats that are relevant to them.
The technician operating the machine needs to know the target time for the job, the specification for the process, quality standards, what the next job to follow will be and how the machine is performing so that it can be set-up and optimised for best performance. Supervisors may be tracking multiple orders through the shop.
They need to know what is completed, in progress and where there are machine outages or bottlenecks to route around. The plant manager may be looking at overall equipment effectiveness OEE, current versus historic performance, RoI and for systemic improvements to drive productivity.
The operational benefits are wider than just the shop floor. Real-time performance information creates an extremely agile and adaptable manufacturing process. Flexible manufacturing, where a particular machine set can produce multiple products and easily and quickly switch from one product to another, becomes an economic reality because information and instructions flow more freely.
The Smart Factory is able to innovate and prototype more readily. It also becomes feasible to produce individually customised products. The Smart Factory promotes lean production and is compatible with just-in-time programmes – delivering what is required, when it is needed – to minimise capital tied up in work-in-progress and the supply chain.
In the UK Weir Minerals, who make heavy duty pumping equipment for mining and the oil and gas industries, registered productivity gains of 12 per cent in the first six months after installing a Smart Factory system. Further improvements have been on-going to such an extent that the company has extended the application from the machine shop to the foundry and is planning a roll out throughout the division, including overseas plants.
Consider the wider application of this technology. Aerospace, automotive and rail are industries that are dominated by prime manufacturers, but supported by a supply infrastructure comprising hundreds of smaller companies supplying materials, sub-systems and components. In this hierarchy, company-to-company communication is relayed bi-directionally through several tiers of supply. It is a slow, sequential and iterative process. This is an impediment to research, technical innovation and production so development programmes are inevitably long, slow and costly.
Now apply the Smart Factory. When the whole supply chain is networked and communicating in both directions the system becomes more responsive, more agile and better able to adapt, innovate and respond to end user demands. In this environment, development cycle times and costs fall, productivity improves, and the whole industry benefits from efficiencies at every level.
Forget the post-industrial society. Craft potters, home knitters, coffee baristas and ballet dancers all deliver delight, but there is no way that a service economy can meet the needs of a modern industrial nation. Smart Factory is the next phase of the industrial revolution, offering the potential for industry to innovate more rapidly to retain the cutting edge advantage that advanced economies need to stay ahead as industrialisation spreads around the world.
Charles Walker is the UK account manager for Forcam UK. Forcam’s flagship product is Factory Framework, a manufacturing execution system (MES) designed specifically to oversee connected, computer-controlled production machines