Smart factories
like building with Lego bricks. ‘We have these standardised modules that when connected together will work as a system,’ he said. Te idea is then that the workpiece
contains an RFID chip telling the production equipment how to process that particular part. Terefore the first action is to fill this memory chip with the complete production information, including details about the customer and where the part should go in the logistics chain and so forth. In the Siemens Amberg
electronics plant, machines and computers handle around 75 per cent of the production chain. Each circuit board has a barcode that communicates with the machinery to carry out tasks like applying solder paste or mounting resistors, capacitors and microchips. More than 1,000 barcode scanners document each production step, feeding information back to the control system – according to Siemens, around 50 million pieces of process data are generated each day. So what’s driving the demand for smart
factories? Professor Zühlke commented that shorter product lifecycles for things like consumer electronics, along with greater
[It’s] a bit like building with Lego bricks… standardised modules when connected together will work as a system
variability in the products are ultimately creating the need for smarter manufacturing. ‘We don’t have the time to ship these products from China to Europe, for example,’ he said. ‘Terefore, we need agile factories to be able to convert to new forms of production. Tis is what we tried to set up with this demonstrator. Te different modules mean we are able to change the factory quickly to assemble new products.’ It’s not just reducing
the production time that’s important but also the engineering and setup times to switch to new automated manufacturing systems. Professor Zühlke gave the example of manufacturing mobile phones, which, he said,
have a lifetime of around six to nine months, but it takes around six months just to engineer and setup such an automated assembly system. ‘We don’t have these six months for setting up such complex systems,’ he said. ‘Terefore, we must start to work more in parallel, so we can prepare our systems in the virtual world and then bring them quickly into the real world.’ Te Siemens plant in Amberg manufactures 1,000 different products and therefore requires a good deal of flexibility in the production setup.
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Quality control As an automation technology, machine vision data will feed into the factories of the future, typically as a quality control mechanism. Te SmartFactory KL uses machine vision extensively, according to Professor Zühlke, incorporating a quality control module with several cameras built in. Te demonstrator also includes augmented vision functionality to provide workers with visual support for manual assembly, for example. Cameras looking down on the worker will recognise their hands along with the parts they are assembling in order to guide the assembly process. In one of the SmartFactory KL
demonstrators the cameras are uploaded with soſtware apps giving different functionality, the thought being that to extend the capabilities of the vision system, the user simply downloads other apps. Professor Zühlke does say though that this is still in the research phase at the moment. ‘Machine vision providers should be aware
that a camera will be just one IP-addressable node in such an IoT internet,’ he commented. ‘Te camera should have a standard connection to the internet and then follow the rules of the internet having a TCP/IP protocol, and perhaps in the industrial environment an OPC UA protocol.’ Te second point that Professor Zühlke
made was that the functionality of a universal vision hardware device would have to be flexible, for example through using apps. ‘Tis will also lead to new business models,’ he said. ‘Hardware will become cheaper, whereas the money will be earned by the apps and the complete system idea, so that a lot of the functionality can be added onto these different hardware levels.’
Standards are key For Industry 4.0 to become reality, Professor Zühlke stated that standardisation is a must. ‘Te only chance is to use standards so that we don’t start engineering from scratch. We should have plug-and-play within our production facilities – everything here is plug- and-play compatible. It’s [SmartFactory KL] a very modular system. We are able to change these modules rapidly and adapt to different requirements of the product.’ Te industries that will adopt the
Products contain RFID chips telling the manufacturing equipment how to process each part 6 Imaging and Machine Vision Europe • Yearbook 2015/2016
technology fastest will be those that already have hardware modularity inbuilt, according to Professor Zühlke, such as semiconductor manufacturing, electronic goods assembly,
SmartFactory KL
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