DISTRIBUTION
Digi-Key’s new product distribution centre expansion (PDCe) opened in August 2022 How automation is advancing
the factory of today? Eric Wendt, director of automation at Digi-Key Electronics investigates how automation is simplifying and streamlining the modern factory floor
O
ur world is in the midst of significant advancement in the way that we manufacture and produce goods. This transformative period is being referred to as the fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0. Industry 4.0 recognises a trend towards automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies and practices which includes artificial intelligence (AI), edge computing and connectivity.
While the trends we will discuss here are very forward-looking and futuristic, many companies are simply not there yet. We recognise organisations are at a variety of different stages along this transformative journey, but just as everyone got on board with the original industrial revolution (steam-powered machinery), the second “technological” revolution (railroad and telegraph), and the third (digital) revolution, we expect that over time, many of these emerging trends in this industrial revolution will become commonplace. To meet rising global demand and navigate supply chain challenges,
manufacturers must think ahead. A new, cost-effective way to do this is by creating a digital twin, which is a real-time virtual representation of a physical system or process that serves as a digital counterpart for simulation, integration, testing and maintenance. Digital twins allow for detailed hardware simulations that influence everything from manufacturing processes to entire layouts of factory floors. By building a machine, production line or warehouse virtually, a company isn’t spending any money on parts or equipment, and the digital twin can validate that it’s going to work prior to making those investments. The digital twin can confirm how to build it, and once the factory is physically built, the digital twin can be used to work on efficiencies and predictive maintenance.
For example, in Digi-Key’s warehouse, the use of digital twins show how many pack stations should be running when pick stations are running, and depending on the volume of orders, determine if those stations
10 DECEMBER/JANUARY 2023 | ELECTRONICS TODAY
need to be staffed up or down. The digital twin can also help us identify how many orders can be managed based on varying staffing levels to determine what is optimal. Another benefit is predictive maintenance and process improvement. With a virtual simulation of the exact manufacturing facility, organisations can tweak things digitally and see how they will fix, or identify issues and pain points. Every component within a factory has a shelf life, and after a certain amount of time, motors and parts inevitably begin to wobble and become electrically unreliable. With a digital twin running predictive maintenance platforms, the system can provide alerts to say, “Hey, this motor’s been running for X number of hours. We’re starting to see it vibrate this much. And we know once it vibrates this much; three weeks, one day and two hours from now, that motor’s going to fail.” Then, downtime can be proactively scheduled to replace the motor instead of having an unexpected failure that crashes the whole system.
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