INDUSTRY 4.0/SMART FACTORIES
HOW ARE MANUFACTURERS SUPPORTING CUSTOMERS TO IMPLEMENT INDUSTRY 4.0? By Cliff Ortmeyer, global head of technical marketing, Farnell
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ndustry 4.0 provides manufacturers with an opportunity to create the intelligent factory, where decision making is supported in real time by connected devices and cloud services. The benefits span predictive maintenance, improvements to efficiency and sustainability, and the optimisation of production processes.
Though the core technologies needed to make Industry 4.0 are already available, a key issue to its successful implementation is one of people with relevant experience in industry, says Steve Sands, head of marketing and product management at Festo. “There is a skills shortage, particularly with an ageing engineering population, which was always going to create problems. Now to resolve this, we don’t just need electrical engineers, mechanical engineers or production engineers. We need people with data science and IT [Information Technology] security skills that need to be combined and there’s still a lot of traditional engineering courses at universities that aren’t equipping people for these new technologies.” The IT skills are needed as the operational technology that drives shop floor automation increasingly needs to connect through the Internet of Things (IoT) to cloud-based planning, management and analytics systems. Engineers working on industrial automation systems must also be able to deploy modern networking and communication systems in their factory to enable communication between different systems to take advantage of the promise of Industry 4.0. “Not that many people have really grasped the full extent of Industry 4.0,” says Martin Walder, vice president of industry at Schneider Electric. Sara Ghaemi, key account management Team Leader for Automotive and Industrial Systems at Panasonic, notes there is a natural reluctance to move too quickly in case there are issues with a novel approach that only emerge once integration has started. “There is always some resistance to new technologies coming in.” But Ghaemi adds there is sense among customers they need to move faster. “The more we talk to our customers, the more we are seeing that they are trying to comprehend the new technology and overcome resistance to it because otherwise they will be left behind as the market they work in moves on. Education will play a factor to shift things in the right direction.”
36 DECEMBER/JANUARY 2021 | FACTORY&HANDLINGSOLUTIONS
To close the gap between theory and real-world deployments, leading global distributors, such as Farnell, have taken on a role of bringing customers and manufacturers together, using the depth and breadth of products and strong supplier relationships to help customers take advantage of the potential of Industry 4.0. As part of Avnet’s ecosystem, Farnell has access to an extensive network to ensure customers are supported at all stages of deployment cycle. The variety of offerings available through a distributor like Farnell make it easy for customers to select suppliers that fit their approach to systems integration. Some will favour the use of a primary vendor, such as Panasonic, to lead their deployment. “Our approach at Panasonic Industry is focused on accompanying our customers from the beginning at the concept development to the end of their journey. We are not just providing a part of the solution, we are offering end-to-end solutions so the customer can integrate their end product to Industry 4.0 or IIoT,” Ghaemi says.
Festo is also among those offering its expertise in deployment. “If customers want to come to us, then the predefined cloud space, connectivity, bandwidth, and everything else is all set up for them,” says Sands. Other customers may prefer to adopt an approach where they combine technology from multiple suppliers to best fit their objectives. Many vendors are embracing the approach of ensuring interoperability, a key element of Industry 4.0. “Molex is heavily focusing on the development of a full- scale engineering solutions platform that will take industrial connectivity to a new level. During this development phase, we aim to provide an open architecture for distributed control and orchestration of devices – from sensors to machines to enterprise and cloud applications. With this platform, we can address the need for a modular approach for machine builders and end users: they will be able to connect one or more devices and ramp up at the pace and scale they choose,” says Jeff Barnes, European distribution corporate account manager for Industrial Products at Molex.
THE PICK & MIX APPROACH
Overall, there is a blurring of the distinction between products and services regardless of whether customers choose to employ a primary vendor or
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