FEATURE SOFTWARE, SCADA & DATA ACQUISITION
DATA-DRIVEN SMART FACTORY SOLUTIONS FOR INDUSTRY 4.0
Most manufacturing companies are constantly balancing the desire to improve production against the return on the investment required to achieve that improvement. Industry 4.0 is a current hot topic and it comes with the promise of facilitating great improvements for manufacturers
A
s with many emerging technologies, there is a shortage of expertise and
experience in the fields of Industry 4.0, IoT and smart manufacturing. Most companies have the skills to install sensors and use the outputs to trigger the next step in production. Many also have the ability to collect all the data from all the sensors and store it for later use. Very few companies have either the expertise to effectively analyse the data and produce useful results or the experience to know what can be realistically achieved from the results.
COMPLETE SOLUTIONS Turck Banner, as a major sensor manufacturer, is frequently asked to provide a complete solution, not just the sensors. It can achieve this in two ways. Turck Banner has invested heavily in its systems division to have in-house expertise in middleware development and have its secure cloud storage facilities. It also has specialist integrator partners, such as Ireland-based Smart Factory, which have a proven history in delivering turnkey projects which exceed customer expectations. Smart Factory is based in the Nexus Innovation Centre at the University of Limerick. CEO, Brendan Sheppard, has over 20 years’ industry experience, and is the driving force behind Smart Factory. Throughout his engineering career, Brendan has worked with many leading multi-nationals, such as Proctor & Gamble, Accantia, Tambrands and Boeing. His commitment to continuous process improvements, lean manufacturing environments, data capturing and reporting was the foundation for the vision behind his Smart Factory organsiation. The Smart Factory solution is a non- invasive retrofit system that captures
50 JUNE 2018 | AUTOMATION
Smart Factory’s solutions are built on the industry proven technology of its hardware partners such as Turck Banner
process data in real-time, giving actionable intelligence to optimise operational performance. Its team has developed a robust and well-engineered solution that combines Industry 4.0 and lean digitalisation, driving efficiency through innovation and bridging the IT/OT convergence in manufacturing. Even at this early stage, this new technology has seen a very positive market response, capturing, analysing and visualising key performance indicators from the manufacturing, logistics and utility sectors, using smart Industry 4.0 technology. Whenever a customer approaches Turck Banner for a solution they know that they will be guided from start to finish using the best possible resources, both in-house and through partners, to achieve the required improvements and return on investment.
DIGITISING THE PHYSICAL WORLD The Internet of Things or Industry 4.0 has received enormous attention. Smart Factory can show you how to look beyond the hype and to understand practical ways IoT technology can create real economic value for your business. The ability to electronically monitor and manage equipment and products in the physical world, makes it possible to bring data- driven decision making to new realms of human activity and to optimise the performance of systems and processes. It has developed a solution to capture,
analyse and visualise key performance indicators from the manufacturing, logistics and utility sectors, using smart Industry 4.0 technology. Its smart solutions reduce the amount of time and resources required to capture and communicate critical information across your organisation and dynamically translate this data into actionable intelligence. They empower employees to take the appropriate corrective action to help eliminate losses and promote a
sense of ownership and collaboration. Smart Factory’s secure OPC architecture can communicate to virtually every type or brand of PLC. Smart wireless sensors facilitate the capturing of data from non-networked machines or semi- manual/manual processes. Intuitive mobile touch screen devices convert manual paperwork into lean digital workflows. Interactive smart digital displays eliminate the wasteful effort of preparing and printing paper reports and help to digitise the daily management process. Continuous product and process improvement and the elimination of waste, is a fundamental principle of lean manufacturing. Capturing and visualising data to highlight losses in real-time has been proven to change behaviour, improve throughput and quality and has been shown to improve overall productivity by five to ten per cent. These solutions are built on the
industry proven technology of the organisation’s hardware partners, including Siemens and Turck Banner, and its data acquisition, analysis and visualisation tools are in use across the globe. Smart Factory can integrate with existing processes and control systems to automatically capture critical data and make it actionable in real time. It can help identify hidden losses, thus reducing planned and unplanned downtime, increasing productivity and maximising efficiency. Research has shown that most data
that is captured from a manufacturing environment is used for anomaly detection and control and not optimisation or prediction. Smart Factory promises to help you to get more out of your physical assets, improving the performance of machines, extending their lives, and learning how they could be optimised or redesigned to do even more.
Smart Factory
https://smartfactory.ie /AUTOMATION T: +353 6151 8443
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