Volkswagon launched the first IoT-based electric car model, BUDD-e car, that is completely built with IoT-based electrical and network structure, with the new modular electric platform. Thus, manufacturing industries already heading towards an interactive, smart industry that yields more productivity & revenue. Like Manufacturing industry, Internet of things also made a great impact on several industries including Food, Retail, Oil, Construction and so much more.
What is Smart Manufacturing?
Smart manufacturing is the process of connecting any types of machines over the internet and check the production process remotely. Not only it helps in organizing the data but also helps in data analysis where the data-scientists use these data for further analysis. Like monitoring the areas where the production is less if the raw materials need to be refilled or run a simulation to check if a particular unit is working efficiently. These type of in-depth analysis helps to see if there are any bottleneck problem that needs immediate attention and so on.
Before Smart Manufacturing – A Glimpse of Age-Old Manufacturing system
Imagine a food manufacturing company where it follows a traditional processing method called batch and queue processing. Where keeping large stocks of inventories on hand so that they can quickly meet the customer orders as and when it is required. They run these machines continuously if they are idle for a long time, then eventually it may lead to a decrease in the machine’s efficiency losing a large revenue.
Why Smart Manufacturing?
“Get a fully integrated, collaborative, e-manufacturing system that helps to meet real-time demand from the input retrieved from the machines”
Smart Manufacturing is the way to go in future, which provides an optimal solution from the existing manufacturing system. Right from effective interconnected machines to providing in-depth data analysis, smart manufacturing has it all. It forecast about the upcoming factory trends, ability to rectify the problems even before it arises through Predictive maintenance, meeting real-time demand through powerful supply chain network and a lot more can be achieved through the digitalization of Manufacturing industry. IoT solution provider helps to achieve these and take the manufacturing industry to the whole new level.
The software that is installed on every machine, lets the employees control and analyze the historical as well as current data from the centralized system that facilitate the intercommunication between the devices in an efficient way.
Top 5 Uses cases of IoT in Manufacturing Industry
Machine 2 Machine interactions are made possible with intelligent networks, automation, smart IoT based devices. Effective software technologies help to monitor, control and also give data to perform analysis which predicts any forthcoming production demand or provides adequate warning for any upcoming maintenance issues.
Digital Twins
Michael Grieves, the head of the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), has simplified Digital Twins in three categories:
- The Physical Product in Real Space
- It’s Digital Twin in Virtual Space
- The data that connect both I & II
Let’s look at a simple use-case which explains the Digital Twin concept in the automotive industry. For a car manufacturing company, digital twins are a boon which certainly adds more value to their businesses. Suppose if an engine oil needs to be changed in a car then the sensor that is connected to the engine oil device will collect and send the data to the virtual digital twin which in turn indicates in a display screen either through the mobile app or manufacturer’s PLM system.
Predictive Maintenance
One of the major use-cases of the IoT is Predictive Maintenance which has evolved from just predicting machine failures to help large organizations by empowering them to take important business decisions.
- Combining the Industrial IoT, cloud with automatic sensors detects even the smallest flaws before they occur.
- Predictive maintenance can also be used for taking larger, strategic decisions to get better business outcomes.
- Unlike the traditional analysis, which relies on the trend of the historical data may take weeks or even months to make a basic analysis, but with the predictive analytics software, it can be cut down to days which speeds up the marketing analysis process.
- Advanced predictive analytics improve the planning and production processes which add more value to any manufacturing industry. Because they provide real-time data on the current market trend, unbiased baseline, which helps the companies to take an informed decision for implementing any changes in their current strategies or tactics.
Asset Tracking Manufacturing
Even the tedious tasks can be broken down into manageable, simpler tasks with the help of IoT. In any manufacturing industries, maintaining and tracking physical assets is a very crucial step which reduces human intervention by increasing the machine to machine communication.
- Asset tracking helps to extend the life of the device by placing these asset sensors to the device where it detects any abnormality in the machine or not performing as expected, then it sends the data to the centralized system to look into the issue and fix if needed.
- Data-driven asset management techniques help to keep track of the expenses and collect crucial data like the root cause of the problem, which assets need to be replaced and so on.
- Asset managements undoubtedly increases the organizational efficiency by reducing costs through less human resources and also the automation process decreases the man errors. Operational efficiency will be increased by investing in these asset tracking techniques that improve the industries ROI and completely eliminates the manual tracking method.
Quality Control
The end-goal for any manufacturing industry or any industry in that sense is customer satisfaction. When we provide them with excellent quality, obviously the customer will be satisfied and this is where Quality control comes into place.
To provide a quality product there are several processes involved in it. Right from analyzing the data retrieval from IoT based sensors to supply chain optimization provides granular details that help to create an excellent quality.
Safety & Security
Manufacturing companies have to deal with heavy machinery and handling them with the utmost caution is essential. Industries like automobiles, the food industry or construction industries need to follow religious safety methods for the welfare of their employees.
- IoT with big data helps to analyze and monitor the health and safety indexes through powerful Key Performance Indicators.
- KPI’s effectively monitors the long-term absences of employees, vehicle damage, number of injuries, property damage of normal wear and tear, overall illness ratio and so on.
Conclusion
Creating a smart manufacturing industry may seem to be a Herculean task, but once the IoT is implemented in any industry, everything will fall in place automatically. Many manufacturing companies lose a whopping sum of money for maintaining or repairing cost. But this is not a scenario anymore with the smart manufacturing industries where it predicts any possible machine failures beforehand through predictive maintenance, meet on-demand supply through the supply chain optimization techniques, reduce manual intervention through the automation process. Thus, build an intelligence network which can be controlled remotely through any web or mobile applications seamlessly and get ready for a digitized IoT based manufacturing firms in future.
