SHOP-FLOOR DATA MANAGEMENT
Even small manufacturers are “wanting to be part of this,” said Mike Rogers, director of automation at Predator Soft- ware Inc. (Beaverton, OR). “All they’re hearing is Industry 4.0, IIoT and everything is going to be connected,” Rogers said. “The benefits of Industry 4.0—maximum efficiencies, higher quality, higher profitability—all lead to making things faster, better and less expensively,” said Pete Tecos, execu- tive vice president of 5ME LLC (Warren, MI). “So now that standards have been developed and adopted, technologies have evolved and tangible benefits have been attained.”
“So now that standards have been developed and adopted, technologies have evolved and tangible benefits have been attained.”
Aerospace is an example of an industry embracing the connected factory, said Mohamed Abuali, CEO Americas for Forcam Inc. (Cincinnati).
“It takes 2.3 million parts to make a Boeing 787, with 5500 factories in the supply chain and a 10-year lead time per plane,” he said. “This means significant pressure on the supply chain with huge backlogs. Technology and digitiza- tion is a crucial strategy to reach significant performance improvements.”
Companies involved in data management on the shop floor say customers are doing their homework about the technology. “The lines have blurred considerably between Industry 4.0, IIoT and Data Driven Manufacturing such that they are really one concept now in the customer’s eyes,” said David McPhail, president and CEO of Memex Inc. (Burlington, ON). Manufacturers, he said, “compile a compendium of good information, which leads to a more educated prospect.” Memex, he said, “can focus on the value cre- ated by adoption of supportive technologies.” Improvements in technology have has- tened the adoption of such technology. “Computer processing speeds have
increased and hardware capable of analyz- ing massive amounts of data are accessible to everyone,” said Jody Romanowski, CEO
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and partner at Cimco Americas (Streamwood, IL). “In addi- tion, I think people see large amounts of data processed in many aspects of their lives. It is reasonable to extend this to their manufacturing processes.
“If you can collect data and get metrics on your activity by simply wearing a device, it seems reasonable that you should be able to have data on exactly what your machine tool was doing all day as well.”
Still, it is up to shop data management concerns to con- vince customers. The term Industry 4.0 “gives us an instant way to categorize what we do,” said Jim Finnerty, product manager at Wintriss Controls (Acton, MA). “So in that respect the introductions are easier. But it hasn’t seemed to help us close more sales.”
What follows is a look at how companies are adapting to the changes.
‘One Sheet of Music’
Zoller markets itself as “a one-partner solution” for cus- tomers to sort through all the available data. Managers “became locked in their office trying to dig
through this flood of unsorted, unfiltered information in an attempt to find out what was relevant in this mass of non- relevant data,” Bigleman said. “True digital tool manage- ment requires a single source to work efficiently; one data- base, which the entire operation utilizes. A manufacturing orchestra playing from one sheet of music.
An employee at Zoller Inc. demonstrates a Zoller display that enables monitoring of different factory systems.
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