Smart Digital Manufacturing

A Guide for Digital Transformation with Real Case Studies Across Industries

Rene Wolf,Raffaello Lepratti

• Editore: Wiley-VCH
• Anno: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783527830954
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Technology & Engineering
• Categoria: Industrial Engineering

The world progresses toward Industry 4.0, and manufacturers are challenged to successfully navigate this unique digital journey. To some, digitalization is a golden opportunity; to others, it is a necessary evil. But to optimist and pessimist alike, there is a widespread puzzlement over the practical details of digitalization. To many manufacturers, digital transformation is a vague and confusing concept they nevertheless must grapple with in order to survive the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The proliferation of digital manufacturing technologies adds to the confusion, leaving many manufacturers perplexed and unprepared, with little real insight into how emerging technologies can help them sustain a competitive edge in their markets. This book effectively conveys Siemens's knowledge and experience through a concept called "Smart Digital Manufacturing, " a stepwise approach to realizing the promise of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The Smart Digital Manufacturing roadmap provides guidance and enables low-risk, high-reward adoption of new manufacturing software technologies through a series of tipping-point investment decisions that result in optimized manufacturing performance. The book provides readers with a clear understanding of what digital technology has to offer them, and how and when to invest in these essential components of tomorrow?s factories.
René Wolf is Senior Vice President of Manufacturing Operations Management Software for Siemens Digital Industries Software, a business unit of the Siemens Digital Factory Division. Raffaello Lepratti is Vice President of Business Development and Marketing for Siemens Digital Industries Software.

Part I
Defining Smart Digital Manufacturing and Manufacturing 4.x

1
Introducing Manufacturing 4.x for Smart Digital Manufacturing

Regardless of your manufacturing industry segment, manufacturing process, supplier tier, or the maturity of your business, one thing is clear: Your manufacturing enterprise will go through a continued digital transformation, no matter how digitalized you are today. The question is what, when, and how will that transformation take place?

That is precisely what this book is intended to answer for you, the manufacturing professional, in a practical and actionable way. We give you the tools to evaluate your market and competitive landscape and plan your digitalization roadmap.

Let us start with some real‐world examples of how market conditions have pushed manufacturers to their tipping point – the point at which a step forward on their digitalization journey was required.

The Proform example

The Proform example

With 30 work centers running eight hours per day, Proform, a relatively small manufacturer of complex tubular parts based in Lyon, France, was successfully managing its production schedule with a three‐person staff and an Excel software spreadsheet. Happily, the company was growing, but a key growing pain was determining when to migrate from the Excel scheduling approach to a targeted digital scheduling solution. The Excel approach held up through quite a bit of growth; but finally, when the company reached 260 work centers running 24 h per day, they had reached their tipping point. The company recognized that it needed visibility through as much as 18 months of planning and scheduling, but a 256‐column spreadsheet gave them visibility only through one month – and that in an unwieldy form. To gain needed visibility, Proform adopted a software application designed specifically for manufacturing planning and scheduling. The system receives orders directly from the company's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and, using powerful algorithms to process large amounts of data quickly, it interacts with the manufacturing execution system (MES) to implement the work schedule and keep planning up to date. With this solution in place, only one staff member is needed to manage 1500 continuous work orders from 7000 referenced finished products, including 1000 that are custom made – freeing up two staff members to focus on other duties. Proform increased its administrative efficiency by 87% and improved its on‐time delivery to 96%.

The chemical company example

When a global manufacturer of specialty chemicals decided to double its paint and coatings production capacity in the United Kingdom, the decision‐makers opted for a new plant. They chose manufacturing technology for this facility with the goal of making it the world's most advanced and sustainable paint factory. But because this plant is only one facility in chemical manufacturer's global production network, what digital system would best support not only the new manufacturing operation but also all the interactions of that new facility with the rest of the company? With this need for a common digital ecosystem in mind, the company chose a fully integrated digital system for the new plant that manages all manufacturing technologies from a single computer system, so that every activity – from ordering raw materials to shipping finished products – can be initiated without operator intervention. The digital system enables the plant to produce paint products across the entire, extensive product portfolio, while also reducing waste by 50% and hazardous volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions by 75%. The digital system's open platform means that interfacility integration is straightforward.

In very different ways and along very different routes, both Proform and the specialty chemical manufacturer have equipped themselves to achieve ongoing performance gains in their manufacturing operations. Because the means by which they are making these performance gains include digital technologies that are new to them, one could say that each company has successfully navigated uncharted waters in the realm known as Industry 4.0 – but Industry 4.0 was neither the goal nor the point of focus during their journeys into digitalization. Instead, they started out with a set of issues and ideas similar to those experienced by a broad array of manufacturers across the globe and across the industrial spectrum, issues and ideas pertaining to their particular manufacturing operations and goals, not to Industry 4.0 or smart manufacturing or a digital transformation. Only as they began seeking ways to address these manufacturing issues did digital technologies enter the discussion – as a means of solving manufacturing questions, not as an end in and of themselves.

As we work with diverse companies in the manufacturing space, we hear similar questions about manufacturing issues, over and over:

• How do we keep up with new or growing demands from our customer base?
• How do we raise productivity without sacrificing quality?
• What new practices and technologies should we adopt to reduce time to market for new products?
• How can we improve our on‐time performance?
• What must we do to cost‐effectively manufacture smaller and smaller lot sizes?
• If the solution is found in Industry 4.0, what exactly does that mean for our particular manufacturing operations?

This last question epitomizes the predicament in which many of the manufacturers with whom we work are finding themselves. To remain competitive, they know that they must embrace the Fourth Industrial Revolution and make tough choices about digital investments (Figure 1.1). But their area of expertise is bending and forming metal tubes, or formulating and producing paints – not IT. Or, at larger companies with IT departments, the intersection of digital and manufacturing engineering is not yet established well enough to support such critical decisions.

Figure 1.1 A radical change for manufacturers.

The proliferation of digital manufacturing technologies is overwhelming to many of these companies. Those individuals responsible for digital planning are often perplexed by the alphabet soup of digital solutions – for quality, execution, planning, scheduling, and intelligence – and they have been given no tools to prepare for making informed decisions about which of these technologies to implement in their factories, and when. Worse yet, some manufacturers have arrived at our doors in a state of decision‐making paralysis, having heard as many stories of digital failure as digital success.

At the same time, new market pressures are compressing the timetable for manufacturers to make digitalization plans and decisions. We delve into these market pressures and their impacts in the next chapter; for now, think about the impact on the management of manufacturing operations when a major automotive original equipment manufacturer (OEM) made the decision to expand its model offering. The company was entering a car segment that requires higher volumes and more highly automated processes than before. In today's market conditions, the company needed a digital solution that would help them ensure a fast time to market for new products, manage more than 70 000 configurations, and implement automated processes to help reduce costs while keeping the highest quality standards of their brand. The market pressures to accomplish these kinds of outcomes are growing and intensifying.

If you count yourself among those needing clarity in the midst of this confusing marketplace, we have good news for you. Like it was for Proform, the specialty chemicals company, the automotive OEM, and thousands of other manufacturers – ranging from small businesses to global conglomerates, startups to centuries‐old concerns, nanotechnology manufacturers to makers of airliners, water bottlers to specialty petrochemical companies, and those located in tropics to frozen tundra – successful digital transformation, and the vast benefits that come with it, is a handful of practical steps away.

1.1 From Industry 4.0 to Manufacturing 4.x

Before addressing the solution, it is good to understand the nature of the problem. How did the manufacturing world arrive at this state of disarray and discomfort with the digital journey? Here are some of the key factors:

Digital pace of innovation: “Exponential” may or may not be technically accurate in characterizing the pace of change in digital technologies, but it sure feels that way to many of us. You install a production planning and control (PPC) system and along comes advanced planning and scheduling (APS). Does APS replace PPC? Overlap with it? Do you need both? The proliferation and advancement of digital technologies is not just unrelenting but also accelerating. Many of these technologies apply to your manufacturing floor – but some do not. How do you know which is which?

The inertia of homegrown solutions: Many manufacturers we have encountered developed digital solutions of their own years ago, often out of necessity because the specific set of capabilities they were seeking ...