Industrial Automation Magazine India

Flavours of Industry 4.0

Published on : Tuesday 30-11--0001

The low hanging fruits that can be expected from Industry 4.0 implementation are productivity and transparency thanks to the real time information flow, writes S Ramachandran.

Industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution is not just a futuristic trend in manufacturing but a concept which organisations across the globe are evaluating, piloting and investing in. It is a topic of interest not just for business leaders but politicians too. It comprises of the following basic components to integrate and leverage technology with traditional operations: i) Connected factories using sensors for a closed loop interoperable ecosystem, iii) Analytics to convert the data from sensors into proactive actionable insights, iii) Autonomous decision making based on the analytics with pre-defined rules, and iv) A simulated copy of the system called a ‘digital twin’ with real time data feed merging the physical and virtual worlds.

The challenge of horizontal scalability

Industry 4.0 is not a single technology or a ‘horizontal’ that can be applied across industries like mobility for communication or cloud for storage. Recent media reports spoke about how GE realised that the Industrial IoT (IIoT) play is not horizontally scalable. Because IIoT and Industry 4.0 complement each other well, this limitation of horizontal scalability applies to Industry 4.0 too. It is not a single application that can be installed and made to run from day one. It is not just the implementation of sensors to gather data.

What is required is a long term holistic perspective on what business benefits Industry 4.0 can bring to the business much before any implementation starts. Deep industry knowledge will be a must before embarking on the journey. The following are some published examples and what we can take away from each one. The days of adopting a technology just for the sake of it are history.

Industry specific pay-offs

The low hanging fruits that can be expected from Industry 4.0 implementation are productivity and transparency thanks to the real time information flow. Transparency enables quick decision making when backed up by analytics – even proactive if predictive models are used. These in turn enable better quality, improved cycle time and cost reduction. Beyond these common benefits, each industry will look for something unique to it depending on its characteristic products and processes.

Automotive is an industry that needs flexibility in manufacturing due to the diversity of its products and a dynamic market – different mixes of products in each shift based on an ever changing market demand. According to what Vijay Sethi, CIO & Head – CSR, Hero MotoCorp, wrote in a media article, “digital twins” were implemented for merging the physical and virtual worlds. Digital twins will act as a “reference for commissioning of all new manufacturing facilities and validation of new models from manufacturability aspects”. Design for manufacturability will be a key take away to validate production runs before the shift starts for making each bike as planned without any delay due to non-availability of resources. What-if scenario runs can be carried out to identify and remove bottlenecks ensuring smooth operations.

Heavy Engineering – GE’s Brilliant Factory aims at drastically reducing the “time to market” for new products and improvements to the existing portfolio. The digital way of doing things – product design in collaboration with multiple teams, 3D Printing for rapid prototyping, robots for welding and inspection in a connected factory – these are some changes to accelerate the process. Operations are made safer and more productive with exoskeletons helping humans in the tough task of heavy material handling. “The speed of change that I see, to me, defines this as a revolution — it is not just one change but a culture change,” says GE’s Global Technology Director, Christine Furstoss.

Bottling plants – Throughput or the amount of defect free units passing through the system is a key metric for the fast moving and seasonal beverage industry. The implementation of automation has already increased it drastically inside the warehouses. Coca-Cola for example has taken it to the next level outside the warehouse with the implementation of intralogistics in its plant in Malaysia, as reported in media. Industry 4.0 enables intralogistics with seamless flow of not just goods but more importantly the associated information at the right time to the right place. Industry 4.0 helps in maximising storage capacity, along with savings in power and water usage without compromising throughput or service levels.

Process manufacturing – Any stoppage in continuous manufacturing operations will have a huge impact due to the nature of the industry. Restart will be a costly, time consuming effort. Infosys reported the findings from a joint study with Aachen University on Industry 4.0 adoption in the asset intensive process based industry.  The study covered asset efficiency under 4 dimensions: i) Maintenance with preventive measures, ii) Operations with real time data and optimisation, iii) Information for interoperability, and iv) Energy usage. According to the authors, Industry 4.0 can be the tool to get the right combination of technology and processes to contribute to better efficiency, a key metric in this sector and eventually making it a competitive advantage.

Food industry – Traceability is a key requirement for both regulatory requirements and for increasing the shelf life of the products in this sector, from the time they are shipped. Traceability will help in case of any product recalls to understand under what conditions each batch was produced. Safety and cleanliness are important in the food industry directly consumed by consumers with high expectations on nutritional aspects and quality. Flexibility matching fast changing market demand will also be important for quick change over.

Life-long service model – With Industry 4.0 enabled technologies, OEMs can introduce enhanced products with new functionality and far greater reliability due to end-to-end digitalisation. This in turn can bring about improved services or new offerings not thought of before, especially for products with a long life time needing regular parts replacement and service. Connected, intelligent products with an umbilical cord with their manufacturer – wired or wireless, build long term relationships with customers for better services and downstream business opportunities. New digital service models harness collected data to offer additional services as well as as-a-service products.

So what does the future hold?

Connectivity of all equipment from a light bulb to the bottle neck machine tool will eventually happen. It will become a basic requirement. Standard analytical models such as trending and forecasting will be adopted along with visualisation. Digital twins are also becoming affordable. What is key, is domain expertise to make use of these tools and technologies for better decision making – predicting a nasty situation that could not have been foreseen without Industry 4.0 and taking steps to prevent it from happening.

Even within one enterprise, there is diversity within a factory or across factories when it comes to the vendor, the control system, software, protocols, tools and applications used, processes followed and so on. Therefore, when we think of replicating Industry 4.0 across multiple enterprises in an industry, horizontal scaling will definitely be a challenge. High levels of customisation will be required for the proof-of-concepts and pilots to scale up vertically within each industry and enterprise. Those who understand the convergence of business needs and the technology will reap the benefits of Industry 4.0 adoption.

“Simplify before you automate” is a clichéd statement. But it will be appropriate here to keep the total cost of implementation under control. Businesses will have to standardise and simplify processes across factories before any implementation. The big picture of why an implementation is being undertaken, from the business perspective should be kept at the back of the mind at all stages for a successful long term Industry 4.0 roll out.