Modern-day factories are far from the disconcerting cacophony that comes to mind when one hears the term factory. It resembles an orchestra where man, machines, and materials come together synchronously to create a product most efficiently.
Credit: Unsplash
Cloud platforms provide the basic infrastructure to conduct this symphony.
Manufacturing and cloud
Modern-day factories focus on efficiency. Completing production of goods using minimum resources in the lowest possible time. Software has been a great enabler in creating and disseminating digital information to improve processes. But the use of software was limited due to the lack of synchronisation with the whole supply chain and the rest of the organisation.
The problem is solved with the help of IoT and cloud technology. The software can reside at a central server that is managed by a service provider. The endpoints can access the computational ability and data of the cloud server. This functions as an orchestration layer to manage operations of factories across production lines and geographies.
ERP, MES, and CMMS are the most common types of software used on a plant floor. They used to be installed on the internal company servers and run locally. Today, cloud-based implementations are dominating the industry.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software integrates all aspects of business operations. It also integrates the plant operations with the rest of the organisation. Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) are used to track and document every process in the manufacturing process. This gives complete visibility from raw materials to the final product. A Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS) aggregates all information and actions regarding maintenance operations in a plant.
ERP, MES, and CMMS software are deployed from cloud systems for seamless operation and execution across the production floor. There are great benefits in having access to important data from any location that has a stable internet connection.
Use cases
Cloud technology is an unavoidable aspect in modern manufacturing plants. It has applications in each aspect of the manufacturing process. Cloud technology assists in improving efficiency and reducing costs.
The following sections discuss some of the key use cases of cloud technology on the plant floor.
Supply chain management
Raw materials arriving on time for production to finished goods reaching the hand of the consumers is part of the supply chain. Vendors, suppliers, dealers, and other stakeholders are part of the supply chain.
Each party has to work with information from the others in the value chain to perform their duties seamlessly. Cloud technology enables the infrastructure required for all the supply chain stakeholders to communicate. Cloud infrastructure helps in the dissemination of real-time information of any part of the supply chain to any play in the chain. Organisations gain a complete 360-degree view of their supply chains.
Here is a hypothetical example of how cloud technology helps in supply chain management.
A car manufacturer has three suppliers for carburettors: A, B, and C. Supplier A faces disruption in the factory and is unable to fulfil its commitment. This information is reflected on the cloud MES system of the car manufacturer. A quick decision can be made to source the carburettor requirement from the two other suppliers.
The additional number of carburettors required is disseminated to Suppliers B and C through the cloud MES system. The supplier can adjust the production accordingly to meet the new requirement. In this hypothetical scenario, cloud infrastructure was instrumental in making a quick decision and executing on it.
Remote access
Businesses today have worldwide operations. It is not possible to survey and inspect the operations of every facility of the company. Travelling continent to continent to inspect manufacturing plants is not an efficient utilisation of time for the senior management. Cloud technology offers a solution in such scenarios.
Factories in industry 4.0 are fitted with IoT sensors. These devices can sense information and send them across a network to the cloud computing infrastructure. Management can access this information from any remote location. Cloud infrastructure enables complete visibility of any company facility from anywhere in the world.
Maintenance professionals can also conduct remote visual inspections with the help of drones, robots, augmented reality, and virtual reality. Cloud infrastructure is the enabler for most of these interactions.
An advanced form of remote access is digital twinning. Here, virtual versions of a plant and the machines in it are operational on the cloud. They are operational on the cloud with the same parameters as the physical plant. It can provide many useful insights that can be used to streamline maintenance and troubleshooting, as well as optimise asset performance.
Process optimisation
Manufacturing plants are cost centres for any business. Decreasing the process cost is how they can contribute positively towards the bottom line. Cost reduction is achieved by increasing process efficiency and reducing wastage. Process optimisation helps to achieve both targets.
IoT devices collect plenty of data every day from plants. According to some estimates, a factory is capable of generating up to one TB of data every day. The enormous volume of data contains insights into factory operations. But for a human analyst, it would take decades to go through the vast amount of data. Even then, he would not be able to bring up the insights hidden in the data.
IoT data is sent to the cloud computing infrastructure associated with it. The data is scrutinised using data science tools to gain insights that lead to process optimisations. Machine learning algorithms are capable of separating the wheat from the chaff in the data. Such modern algorithms are applied to the large data set to identify the faults in the processes and the remedies to fix the faults.
Dynamic production
The goods produced by the plant have to be sold in time or they will pile up as unsold inventory. Carrying inventory has costs associated with it and it needs to be minimised. The alternative is to only produce the number of goods that are in demand.
A dynamic production environment can scale up or down the production according to the demand. To achieve this, the production facility has to be intricately connected to the sales machinery of the company. When the sales team reports low demand for a product, the production for that is reduced - and vice versa.
Such dynamic management of production is possible when various parts of a firm are connected with cloud ERP systems. Dynamic production avoids wastage and inventory carrying costs.
Let’s say you are a toy manufacturer that has an integrated eCommerce wing with your production facilities. The holiday shopping season starts in November. Though sales departments have forecasts, the actual sales will differ from that. POS data gives accurate sales volumes. Cloud ERP systems integrate all the information from POS data to production information. Based on the real-time sales volume for different toys, your production is dynamically adjusted with information from cloud ERP systems.
Streamline maintenance
An important part of plant operations is maintenance. Proper maintenance is responsible for smooth operations of any plant and safety of equipment in the factory.
CMMS software aggregates all maintenance-related tasks of a plant in one single interface. Cloud-based maintenance software helps to build efficient maintenance workflows, manage employees, and schedule tasks - all without being tied to a desk.
Advantages of implementing cloud CMMS solutions are:
- central hub to plan and schedule maintenance activities
- eliminate holding physical manuals and paperwork
- automating data entry and storage leaves less room for human error
- data can be accessed from anywhere
- technicians and operators are one click (or tap) away from asset history, troubleshooting checklists, safety guidelines, operating manuals, and other documents that make their daily work faster, safer, and easier
While those are all specific examples, data gathering, storage, automation, and access are the main benefits of having cloud technology on your plant floor.
Manufacturing and cloud
Cloud technology is deeply intermeshed with modern manufacturing plants. This is bound to increase with the adoption of industry 4.0. IoT devices, 5G connectivity, cheap cloud service providers, etc. - making it easier to adopt digital solutions for plant operations. While it does come with some challenges, cloud technology will provide the base infrastructure to build digital competence for manufacturers.
The author, Bryan Christiansen, is the founder and CEO of Limble CMMS. Limble is a modern, easy to use mobile CMMS software that takes the stress and chaos out of maintenance by helping managers organise, automate, and streamline their maintenance operations.
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