What is the future of manufacturing post-Covid-19? Every manufacturer has been affected by the crisis which means the need to be more productive and cost-efficient is critical. Many are turning to technology for new solutions, but where do you start? Here Keith Tilley CEO of Intoware, explains why digitalisation is driving competitiveness.
Currently, we are experiencing disruption on a major scale, with some manufacturers suffering from weaker demand and others seeing huge increases. This has led many to accelerate their adoption of new digital technologies to help secure their future.
Before the pandemic, the fourth industrial revolution or Industry 4.0 which marries physical production and operations to smart digital technology, machine learning and big data was somewhere on the horizon.
But as we enter the ‘new normal’, digital technology is needed to help manufacturers understand major questions, such as: Where are our weaknesses? What is causing the bottleneck in our assembly line? Do we have sufficient labour? Can we maintain plant operations with fewer staff?
Being able to answer these questions is key to competitiveness in the ‘new normal’. The challenge right now is the lack of real-time data analytics preventing them from being answered.
Typically, data is recorded but scattered in silos, which means it’s difficult to access and pass freely between systems preventing the possibility of better, collaborative working. This means that if a change in material specification is needed, then it is difficult to implement, preventing the plant from being fully optimised.
So how do we go from pen and paper to digital workflows, known as digitisation, artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) and wearables to begin the journey towards the connected factory?
What is Industry 4.0?
Industry 4.0 is a new industrial revolution and Intoware’s workflow automation platform, WorkfloPlus is well placed to support. Using AI and machine learning, manufacturers can now use this technology to blend information held within existing systems and legacy data and combine it with worker knowledge, manuals and documents to drive continuous improvement with intelligent self-learning systems and processes.
These can be accessed anywhere, at any time and in any language via a computer, wearable device, tablet or mobile. This enables manufacturers to reduce costs, increase their first-time fix rate and facilities knowledge transfer and the capture of valuable data.
On a day-to-day basis, it brings immediate benefits as it helps to improve traceability, increase efficiency, reduce risk, enhance operational transparency and provides an accurate audit trail for health and safety compliance.
Breaking Bottlenecks
So, how can digitalisation help with avoiding assembly line bottlenecks for example? Bottlenecks have a huge impact on the efficiency of manufacturing operations increasing the time and cost of production. As manufacturing processes are comprised of a series of stages, efficiency depends on each of these stages working seamlessly to maximise performance.
Digitalisation can help avoid these bottlenecks, by simply placing barcode scanning points across the production process as activities are undertaken or parts are consumed to form an assembly. This is simple to introduce and delivers enhanced visibility. It also means there is sufficient time to verify components at the point of assembly, rather than wait for final quality checks prior to shipment.
An innovative company that has already begun its digital journey is assembly manufacturer Carrio Cabling Corporation based in Colorado Springs, USA. It engineers and manufactures custom moulded cable assemblies for the oil, military and medical industries.
Digitalisation case study
The manufacturer had been looking for a way to identify assembly bottlenecks or unforeseen problems that were slowing down their assembly process for some time. After doing research into new solutions on the market, it decided to run a trial of WorkfloPlus.
It was estimated that it would take between 9-12 months to fully train staff and deploy WorkfloPlus. Using WorkfloPlus they replaced the need for paper-based processes with a digital solution that also allowed the management team to monitor the overall efficiency of the workforce in real-time as well as react quickly to any quality control issues.
In fact, they found WorkfloPlus so quick and simple to use that half of the assemblers were trained and using the software platform in just six weeks. With between forty and fifty assemblers working on several customer orders at one time, it is common for one assembler to change between multiple different operations within a particular assembly several times a day, each with their own instructions or procedures.
With the ability to view the assembly line in real-time, the manufacturer is now able to quickly identify production bottlenecks – which has hugely improved output. Now the team is building at least five new workflows every day.
The old paper-based system has been completely replaced with a digital platform with a data feed that can be analysed in real-time. The team at the Carrio Cabling Corporation now use it to generate hourly data reports with a level of insight that was never previously possible.
Miles Carrio of the Carrio Cabling Corporation said: “Initially the staff were hesitant to any change to their existing approach, but they quickly found using WorkfloPlus to have major benefits over the paper-based processes. The great thing about it is that they can build a workflow in five minutes, upload it and try it out then and there. So, it’s incredibly easy to test, iterate and improve.”
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