Who’s afraid of Industry 4.0?
22 November 2017
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Car makers and tier one suppliers are at the forefront of digital manufacturing, but progress to adopt new 4IR technologies could be quicker across the supply chain, says Harry Chana of Daifuku.
A quiet revolution is taking place in the assembly plants of global vehicle manufacturers (OEMs) and those of their key suppliers. Industry 4.0 – also referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) – is being more widely adopted by engineers to improve quality, cut out waste and minimise operational downtime. The use of real-time data is generally regarded as key to open the door to mass customisation.
While many big industrial names, such as Siemens and Bosch, are understandably keen to preach the new mantra of 4IR, many production engineers within the automotive supply chain are less enthusiastic about this fundamental change in manufacturing culture. Having spent their 30 year careers focusing on tangibles such as measurable outputs, microns and oil pressures, switching to a digital future is sometimes a big ask for many traditional engineers. The prospect of moving to a ‘digital factory’ scenario scares many operational engineers to death. While the investment required to replace existing systems with their 4IR alternatives is significant, many production engineers can’t visualise such a fundamental transformation of their systems taking place for many years.
However, there is another way to think about 4IR that is much more appealing to automotive engineers. This focuses on short term gains, as opposed to root and branch change. It involves using digital control systems to improve the performance of a specific stage within a larger manufacturing process, as opposed to the total production line.
Getting to grips with digitisation
Typically, this approach might involve the monitoring of engine handler robots towards the end of the vehicle assembly process. Using an affordable, discrete digital controller – in this case our Conprosys DAQ device – we can detect signs of potential breakdown, through waveform analysis, before any reduction in robot performance occurs. Having identified a potential performance issue, engineers can choose to either run a diagnostic check during operation or make a more fundamental assessment once production has halted. This light touch adoption of 4IR is already proving to be an effective, low cost efficiency improvement solution for several OEMs in both Japan and Asia.
The capture and creation of actionable data can also be used by engineering managers to monitor the performance of production plant remotely. We have experience of introducing a simple M2M gateway, which provides the link that enables engineering managers to monitor facility operations via smartphone or tablet remotely. Without the need for large-scale systems, this lowers the cost of investment required to maintain world-class plant operation.
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While most OEMs now have some form of Industry 4.0 strategy in place, the real opportunities for the next five years line across the supply chain, where tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers are still grappling with the realities of introducing 4IR into their processes.
While we hear a lot about Industry 4.0 adoption among large OEMs and top tier suppliers, there is strong evidence to suggest that many smaller suppliers are lagging behind headline rates of 4IR adoption. Recent figures from the Engineering Employers’ Federation (EEF) show that just 11 percent of manufacturers think that UK industry is ready to take advantage of 4IR. Data from PwC, the consultancy, shows that UK manufacturers are planning to invest on average seven times less than their German counterparts in 4IR over the next five years.
The automotive industry is among the leaders in 4IR, but there is a big gap between the major players and the tier twos and tier threes. There, we have a huge difference in maturity, but we need to take into account that most companies have undertaken efforts, only 16 percent have a true strategy at scale. Normally, companies should have 30 percent of profit coming from digitalisation and that’s not the case today.
Mass customisation
New applications of software and analytics are producing novel approaches to the improvement of industrial asset operations. The integration of cloud-based analytics with industrial machinery offers a tremendous opportunity for productivity gains. Technologies can be leveraged to drill down into data for insight into asset performance and all related processes, enabling substantial increases in productivity and efficiency. Industry 4.0 capitalises on these evolutions in automation and connectivity to offer a decentralised production model at plant level, from the design stage through to supply chain interaction, manufacturing, distribution and customer service.
Let’s take the example of an automotive seating manufacturer. Here, Industry 4.0 is allowing vehicle seating and interiors suppliers to achieve material savings and control production costs, while improving both operational performance and manufacturing processes. With growing demand for increasingly personalised interiors, coping with the complexity of production processes is a key benefit of technologically enabled manufacturing processes.
Harry Chana of Daifuku
This fundamental change in the way suppliers are working drives efficiency programmes within the OEMs. If you look at the traditional industry today, each vehicle programme requires its own set of investments, in terms of presses, moulds and dies. Once the industry starts to embrace digitalisation, we will see a much more software-oriented kind of focus where the investments are no longer in presses and in moulds, but rather in software, where you can have customisation for a wider, more diverse array of projects for OEMs.
Think small
We’re working increasingly with OEMs and their suppliers on projects that involve partial use of Industry 4.0. And this seems to be a very sensible strategy when it comes to digitising production processes. Granted, it’s ideal to start with a clean sheet of paper when establishing a state of the art production facility – as we’re seeing in many strong Asian economies – but with long established facilities, this is simply not viable.
Major vehicle manufacturers are already some way down the Industry 4.0 road. It’s clearly time for tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers to get on board the digital express, unless they want to find themselves at significant competitive disadvantage. Our advice to those who have not yet developed a digital strategy is to take a ‘think small’ approach. While a total digital revolution of your existing processes might be too much to bear, identifying quick, simple wins will get you on the road to success.
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