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Smart manufacturing provides a path to development and innovation for "emerging" industries
Author : By Mark Yeeles, VP Industrial Automation, Schneider Electric
16 March 2022
Process industries evolve at varying rates in terms of technology and process foundation. Some traditional process industries, such as coal, petroleum, metals, tobacco, and paper, are slowly updating their automated systems. Others, such as pharmaceuticals, consumer packaged products, food and beverage and specialised chemicals, are speeding up their development by adopting smart manufacturing techniques that can keep up with their rapid expansion.
These sectors are referred to as "emerging" because they are outperforming other process industries in terms of both productivity and innovation. The emerging industries attain these new levels of growth and proficiency thanks in large part to digitalisation, which enables smart manufacturing and, in turn, helps them to achieve faster digital transformation. These terms often get confused – but we have simplified their meanings below!
Digitalisation refers to the use of digital technologies and digitised data to enable process improvement. It’s crucial to note that digitalisation does not change or transform a process. Digitalisation in process industries is most often achieved through automation systems and increases productivity and efficiency while reducing costs.
On the other hand, digital transformation is a business transformation enabled by digitalisation. This is the shift from a manual, locally operated process to a software-driven remotely monitored and controlled process. An example of this is a manual operation and monitoring of a standalone boiler to using a connected boiler, linked to other related processes, not only for more efficient operational purposes, but also for influencing and optimising both upstream and downstream plant performance. Such projects usually involve the convergence of information technology systems with operational technology (IT/OT).
So, how can industries leverage technologies to address business challenges and become smarter?
Smart manufacturing distinguishes the leaders from the stragglers
When it comes to smart manufacturing investments in this new, digitalised process industry world, is that innovators such as emerging process industries leap further ahead while the stragglers, traditional “heavy” industries, fall further and further behind. By sticking with traditional systems, which are often proprietary, the stragglers experience the high costs of customisation, modernisation, and integration with third-party systems due to obsolescence. Performance depends on the skills and domain expertise of scarce application software development resources. Given the turnover of engineers that we see today, the lack of standardisation makes the systems difficult to maintain.
Such approaches are not suited to emerging industry applications. They seek more heterogenous solutions with more open environments where integration of new applications is simple and cost effective. Such open systems allow for a wide choice of process improvement options making it easier to select best of breed solutions across the entire product development life cycle. For example, emerging industry companies seek easy connectivity to manufacturing execution systems (MES), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and internet of things (IoT) systems and cost-effective integration with intelligent motor control centre (MCC) components, variable speed drives (VFDs), energy management systems, and field instruments such as flowmeters and weighing systems ? through open platform communications (OPC)-compliant Ethernet networks. The successful application of these integrated solutions options is being facilitated by the expansion of digital technologies within the emerging ‘smart manufacturing’ industries.
Broad integration is made easier with today's smart manufacturing digital technologies
Today’s expanding scope of digitalisation extends far beyond the distributed control system (DCS) selected for the core process. A typical process plant in the emerging industry segments must integrate raw material storage tanks, measuring tanks, reactors, blenders, mixers, dryers, centrifuges, intermediate/ finished product tanks, pigging systems, pneumatic conveying systems, scrubbers, conveyors, and robots just to name a few. Typical process operations are loading, unloading and transfer of raw materials, charging of raw material in measured quantities, controlled heating and cooling, transfer of intermediate materials, drying, packing, filling, etc. Typical utility equipment includes boilers, thermic fluid heaters, cooling towers, chillers, water treatment plants, compressors, effluent treatment plants, and more. Many of these machines are provided by specialist original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and come with their own automation systems. For digitalisation investments to convert into marketplace competitiveness, growth, and profitability, it is necessary to integrate these various automation systems with the central DCS.
Manufacturers have recognised the gaps that emerging process industries face when digitalising operations and, in response, have developed new generation DCS products designed especially for the dynamic engineering and operations of emerging process industries. These tools retain the efficiency features of DCSs such as single database, tight integration, and powerful diagnostics as well as the advantages of a programmable logic controller (PLC) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems such as flexibility, ease of use, and openness. These solutions are ideal for emerging process industries that are seeking to digitalise operations.
Nobody can accomplish anything by themselves
It's vital to choose the correct ecosystem of partners to ensure digitalisation success. In the digital age, no single business can do it alone. At Schneider Electric, we have formed hundreds of relationships throughout the world with automation systems integrators, distributors, software developers, consultants, system integrators, OEMs, and others to provide holistic, comprehensive solutions to clients.
When looking to select an ecosystem, automation and domain expertise as well as the capacity to implement digitalisation solutions is only half of the picture. The ability to collaborate amongst the ecosystem is just as important, and in these circumstances it's best to use automation experts, consultants, or experienced services providers, who have automation and domain expertise as well as the capacity to implement digitalisation solutions. It’s time for emerging industries to think smarter with their technology investments to better address the business requirements of the future.
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