SMART MANUFACTURING
Digital job description While GE sees the factory of tomorrow as a Brilliant
Factory and Lockheed describes a digital tapestry, what both are talking about is using technologies like sensors, wireless capability and data-crunching software, to visual- ize, optimize and problem-solve operations in real time. Other keywords manufacturing visionaries use include the Internet of Things, the Industrial Internet, Industrie 4.0, and smart, or advanced, manufacturing (see glossary).
For example, worker vests can be equipped with loca- tion sensors that vibrate when an employee is too close to something dangerous, such as a forklift that is back- ing up. Already, many machines, such as press brakes, feature vision systems that prevent fingers from getting caught inside. Jack Hu, professor of industrial and operations en- gineering and interim vice president for research at the University of Michigan, envisions factories managing the
With digital tools, manufacturing and design engineers can study parts and the manufacturing processes for those parts virtually, throughout the design process, using three-dimensional views. In GE’s Brilliant Factory Lab in Niskayuna, NY, a manufacturing specialist examines a test part.
In a cyber-physical system, sensors and the data they
collect, analyze and share in feedback loops can help ma- chines and systems make decisions. For example, in the robotic pick-and-place process, com-
puter vision sensors help a robot figure out the orientation and height of a part in a randomly stacked pile in a bin, where best to grip it, and how to move it to where it’s needed. But, let’s say that robot drops a part and production slows down. A smart, connected robot will tell other machines on a line or in a cell, wirelessly, that it missed its target and that produc- tion ought to slow down until it catches up. Or, the robot is retrieving finished parts from a machine,
but for some reason the door to that machine won’t open. The machine tells the robot the door is still closed so the robot doesn’t crash into it. These smart communications can all help factories
prevent disruptions and optimize their performance, not to mention save wear and tear on robots and humans. (If Chaplin were with us today, he’d light up a cigarette right about now and breathe a big sigh of relief.) They can also make factories safer.
12
collection, analysis and use of data that will “reveal new things we couldn’t understand or look into” before. He also sees high-speed manufacturing using 3D printing, as well as more automation and connectivity among everything. “The machines can adapt so that you can create parts
much faster… so that you can add many functions in the prod- uct that are tailored to each and every individual” for mass personalization, or batch-size-one manufacturing, said Hu. Using bicycle manufacturing as an example, he said,
“You can personalize the handlebars and seat to each and every individual, and you can assemble those personalized components to a frame that may be standard.”
A communication matrix What this merger of the real and virtual worlds in
manufacturing does, at its most basic level, is enable communication. Communication is vital in the factory of the future, whether among the 50 billion new and legacy machines that one GE software executive estimates will be con- nected to the Internet by 2020, between raw materials and
Spring 2016 Photo courtesy of GE
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70
