The coming age of smart factories
An early example of this approach can be found at the Siemens Electronics Manufacturing Plant in Amberg (EWA), which represents an advanced example of the company’s Digital Enterprise Platform — a production environment that could become standard ten years from now.
This system marks the a step towards the creation of Industry 4.0. A project in the high-tech strategy of the German government, Industry 4.0 promotes the computerization of the manufacturing industry. In the United States, an initiative known as the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition is also working on the future of manufacturing.
Industry 4.0 promotes the idea of a fourth industrial revolution where real and virtual manufacturing worlds will merge. Factories will then be largely able to control and optimize themselves. However, this requires a lot of communication, both wired and wireless, much akin to the concept of the IoT.
With all the machine/sensor data on the cloud, analyses and actions can be taken to optimize manufacturing, predict failures, schedule maintenance, automatically replenish inventory, and even customize finished product specifications to reflect market dynamics. Throwing in 3D printing will even enable factories to make parts specific to a single product. Such customisation to a single unit would potentially cut costs dramatically for low volume industries. It could potentially enable one to order a customised product over the internet, which is delivered to the doorstep in days.
Maxim illustrated the power of this concept at Electronica 2014 with a Beer Mug Factory demonstration where visitors could get a free customized mug made in front of them—then have it filled up at happy hour!
Building smart factories will require adding intelligence and communications to systems, which will be achieved through the use of miniaturized processors, storage units, sensors, and transmitters that will be embedded in nearly all conceivable types of machines, unfinished products, and materials. Smart tools and ‘intelligent’ software agents will also be added to the mix for structuring data flows. Smart factories will be largely autonomous as even products will communicate with one another and with production systems in order to optimize manufacturing processes. Software agents will monitor each step and ensure that production specifications and regulations are complied with. The key here is that everything will have information embedded into it so that the factory software can optimise production.
Another important consideration is that of defects. Smart factories could bring the defect level down to almost zero. Siemens once again demonstrates this point at its Amberg plant. Among the products Siemens has produced at this location since it was founded in 1989 are the Simatic programmable logic controllers (PLCs). Amberg currently manufactures more than 1,000 versions of this product which controls machines and plants, and automates production. Simatic controls the on-board systems of cruise ships as well as industrial manufacturing processes. Simatic also controls production in Amberg itself. Products made for some 60,000 customers all over the world are ready for dispatch within 24 hours.
With a production quality rate of 99.9988 percent, the plant is a showcase factory in its field. Karl-Heinz Büttner, Head of the EWA, said, “I don’t know of any comparable factory in the whole world that achieves such a low failure rate.” The factory makes some 12 million Simatic products each year and, with 230 working days a year, this means that one product leaves the plant every second.
Production is largely automated. Machines and computers handle 75 percent of the value chain autonomously. Employees are responsible for the remaining quarter of the work. The only time a human hand touches the basic component – an unpopulated printed circuit board – is at the start of production when an employee places it on the production line. From that moment, everything is machine controlled.
While smart factories will be concentrated at a plant, they will borrow a lot of technology based on the emerging IoT. For security reasons smart factories would most likely close their networks and use hardware authentication methods to verify machines on the network. However, secure lines to the outside world will be needed to communicate with suppliers and customers. How security is implemented will be one of the challenges in developing smart factories to their maximum potential.
The IoT itself will be very widespread from consumer products such as running shoes through to medical devices and connected cars. Security here will also be a challenge in the near future.
In the end, smart factories are coming, whether driven by the need to compete with low-cost producers by driving down manufacturing costs or the need to eliminate defects in expensive high-end products, where failure is a costly proposition, or even to cater to a low-volume custom-product market.
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