By Brian Mutai
Industry 4.0 also known as the intelligent industry, has been coined by some researchers as the fourth industrial revolution. The change that has been witnessed is based on the uptake of new technologies for the continual automation of the production process. It is about innovative technologies whose application to the industry has been advanced steadily.
Furthermore, these changes are most observed in the manufacturing industry. Industry 4.0 has provided the opportunity for the development of predictive maintenance. This involves collecting and evaluating data from the machines to increase efficiency and optimize maintenance processes. Not only can we estimate conditions of the equipment, but also more importantly, accurately predict when maintenance work is necessary.
Abruptly stopping production to attend to a broken machine can lead to lots of unnecessary costs. These words are echoed by Bosch in their automotive factory in China. Facing lots of unscheduled repairs in their production line, Bosch went ahead to connect its machinery to monitor the overall production process at the core of its plant by embedding sensors into the factory’s machines which were then used to collect data about the machines’ overall “health”.
Once collected, advanced data analytics tools process the data in real time and alert personnel when bottlenecks in the production procedures are identified. This approach helped to predict equipment failures, enabling the factory to program maintenance operations well before any failures occurred. As a result, the factory was able to keep its machinery operating for longer periods of time.
The company estimates that using data analysis and predictive maintenance in this way led to more than 10% output increase in certain areas, whilst refining delivery and customer satisfaction. Ultimately, greater awareness of the plant’s operations supports better informed and faster decision-making throughout the entire organization, empowering it to reduce machinery downtime and optimize production procedures.
Much recently, we had the opportunity to visit one of SEAT’s production lines in Barcelona. With robots doing more than 85% of the tasks and with ridiculously high costs for stopping the production line for repairs, it was of utmost importance for SEAT to predictive maintenance technology capabilities in their production line. Just like Bosch, SEAT is able to monitor the health of their machinery and schedule repairs in advance of any machine failures. This saves them lots of time and money; ensuring their production lines are running without any hiccups.
In conclusion, this has been a great addition for manufacturing firms. It has led to cost savings on very high levels for many firms. In our opinion, it is definitely a step in the right direction towards mass personal customization. With customers taking centre stage at this time, we will be able to see mass customer specifications also plugged in into the production cycle in the same way maintenance schedules can be pre-programmed.
References:
https://medium.com/the-industry-4-0-blog/industrial-iot-vs-industry-4-0-vs-industry-5-0-a5f9541da036
https://amfg.ai/2019/03/28/industry-4-0-7-real-world-examples-of-digital-manufacturing-in-action/
https://blog.bosch-si.com/industry40/
https://blog.bosch-si.com/industry40/industry-4-0-predictive-maintenance-use-cases-in-detail/
Operation & Supply Chain - Industry 4.0 