Cultivating ideas in the digital landscape

THE DAY'S proceedings kicked off with Turck Banner managing director Tony Coghlan talking about condition monitoring and sustainable solutions. Coghlan outlined the challenges being faced by businesses across the board and looked at how Truck Banner is in a position to help provide solutions, particularly in the areas of production efficiency, energy management and the supply chain.

Making the argument for condition monitoring, Coghlan pointed to the benefits of increased machine availability and improved maintenance costs.

“At Truck Banner we can start you on the journey, from a simple solution to complete turnkey systems,” says Coghlan. “What we are trying to do as a business is put you on that IIoT journey.”

Monitoring solutions from Truck Banner can encompass, for example, predictive maintenance for critical assets, using sensors to measure balance, temperature, current, runtime, etc. “We are trying to make it easy for you to monitor these things without touching existing systems, and making it very cost effective to install,” he continues.

Wireless solutions are central to the Tuck Banner offering, and the presentation emphasised the robust, industrial nature of the systems and products. “There are lots of wireless solutions out there - maybe Zigbee, Bluetooth – but we have developed industrial wireless solutions. As an industrial control company, we understand the requirements for long distances, so some of our sensors work up to 3km, likewise, our wireless network can go point-to-point for 3km and we can make mesh systems,” says Coghlan.

In many cases the information needed to carry out condition monitoring may already be in existing equipment, but the infrastructure needed to collect the data is lacking. This is where Truck Banner can implement what the company refers to as ‘digital shadowing’, piggybacking off the different systems with the wireless portfolio. All the data collected is transmitted to a central point, ready to be analysed and acted upon.

Truck Banner understands that it can be a significant outlay to transform a whole plant in this way, so the company has starter kits that can be applied to a certain piece of machinery or part of a process, enabling wireless transmission of data to the cloud, or locally, allowing the client to start consuming data.

GAMBICA

The second presentation of the day came from Nikesh Mistry, sector head of industrial automation at GAMICA, which addressed the importance of automation in maintaining competitive edge. Amongst GAMICA members, the types of competitive advantage that feature are: cost-based; providing a differentiated product or service; being the first to market with a particular offering or approach; advantage gained through the timing of a new launch; and underpinning all of these, technology-based advantage.

“Rapid advances in technology can have the most important effects on competition,” says Mistry. “Innovation can create competitive advantage both domestically and internationally in all sorts of ways. It can help you gain that cost-based advantage, it can help you attack a market first, it can help you be the first mover, and it can help you be a differentiator. “

In short technology-based advantage really helps to boost the other potential competitive advantages. And in order to thrive in today’s digital world, you need to keep your digital transformation up to date, asserts Mistry.

To accelerate the pace of digital adoption, Mistry identified three main areas upon which businesses can focus: enabling an eco-system, countering imbalances across the UK compared with the EU via policies, and investment. However, he also warned against “investment for investment’s sake” when it comes to automation and stressed the importance of identifying specific goals and how automation can be used to help meet these on a case-by-case basis.

NCSC

A representative from the National Cyber Security Centre spoke about the roles and responsibilities of the NCSC, some of the threats that are being seen in the manufacturing sector, and the steps that businesses can take to ensure they have a good security set-up that will protect them from malicious threats.

Set up in 2016 to act as the UK technical authority for cyber security, providing a one-stop-shop for guidance, support and advice across the public and private sectors, as well as individuals and families.

“The threat of cyber attacks is real, and it is increasing. What we are now seeing is a wider spectrum of cyber threat actors across the board, each of which will have their own tactics and techniques,” he says.

Cyber security is no longer just an IT issue - everyone has a role to play when it comes to cyber security and a business’s cyber posture. The pandemic meant that many companies increased levels of hybrid working and built on their IT estate through new systems, which has resulted in larger digital footprints. If businesses are to protect themselves from cyber breaches and attacks, individuals need to be aware of their footprints within the organisation, across both digital and physical assets - not just machinery, but also data.

If businesses do not have a proper understanding of their IT estate it is difficult for them to ascertain what they need to protect - when introducing new systems and new ways of working, each endpoint needs to be protected from cyber attacks. The NCSC offers guidance on asset management, and how audits can help identify aspects of a business that might have been overlooked and lead to vulnerabilities.

As well as looking at the different types of phishing attacks, how to recognise them, and what to do in the event of a breach, the presentation covered ransomware.

“One of the reasons ransomware is so prolific in the manufacturing sector is the use of operation technology and industrial control system which may not be up to date with the latest security patches, and may be connected to a network which spreads throughout the wider estate,” says the presenter.

AMRC

Artur Grigals from the AMRC talked about the smart factory framework developed there. He looked at a typical smart factory architecture, where there are many end nodes deployed and many connections being made between different products and products. These architectures typically grow organically becoming more and more complex because the digital requirements of a business grow over time.

“The result is a Frankenstein-like architecture where a new solution will come along and be bolted on to solve a problem without any real thought about the underlying architectural scalability. It becomes increasingly difficult to change the architecture, so users become effectively locked into vendors or solutions. It becomes difficult to manage,” says Grigals. “So the idea is to move away from the concept of connecting nodes to infrastructure using a single connection, so rather than point-to-point connections, we are connecting to infrastructure that gives us a really scalable foundation moving forward.”

At the AMRC the aim is to standardise the way machines are connected and data is collected. In order to achieve this, three main principles have been adopted: report by expiation, connectors infrastructure; and be edge-driven. The technology used to implement this is MQTT, which allows nodes to transmit data to a central broker, which then forwards the data to relevant nodes as appropriate. Sparkplug was selected for standard communication over MQTT.

“We set ourselves up to develop a minimum viable product and a pilot deployment at the AMRC,” says Grigals. “We made a lot of mistakes on the way, we documented it, and what came out of it was Factory+.”

Factory+ is a start-to-finish manual for deploying MQTT with Sparkplug, and creating a plug-and-play infrastructure in a manufacturing environment. It is completely open access and there is a public portal with instructions on how to deploy.

UKIVA

Representing the United Kingdom Industrial Vision Association, Ian Alderton addressed the use of machine vision systems as an essential partner to robotics throughout industry, giving the robot the ‘eyes’ to help carry out tasks to high levels of accuracy.

The presentation detailed specific applications, for example, automated bin picking using 3D cameras which enable the system to identify different layers of items within the bins so the robot knows not to try and grab from a lower level. Another use case covered code reading for stock control, ensuring that the correct parts are identified, even if codes are damaged.

Machine vision is also widely used for inspection purposes, for instance, when it comes to manufactured objects with multiple pins, it is possible to make a 3D measurement to ensure everything is within specification and a connection has been properly made before the part moves further down the manufacturing process.

Another application commonly seen thought the food industry is seal and adhesive bead testing, making sure that everything is the correct height, position and tolerance. This is the type of task that if performed manually would be highly monotonous and potentially produce inaccurate results.

“These systems do this all day, every day,” says Alderton. “They give accurate results all the time - they don’t go on breaks or go on holiday!”

By taking on the more tedious tasks, robotics and machine vision enhances the workforce experience and increases productivity and quality. This can lead to a higher-skilled workforce and potential growth, asserts Alderton, rather than encroaching on jobs.

BARA

Chairman of the British Automation and Robot Association George Thompson looked at a subject that has been close to his heart since his high school days - sustainability. Meaning different things to different people, in business terms Thompson defined sustainability as being about goods and services produced that do not damage the environment and tied this into how many of the benefits of automation can be inherently useful when it comes to achieving sustainability goals.

Taking the basic example of pallet wrapping, showed instances where a load had been manually wrapped, either with too much wrap or not enough. “The advantage of using an automated wrapping system, or even a semi-automated system, is that they typically will use 30% less plastic because it can pre-stretch,” says Thompson. “When it’s put on, it’s put on to a specific tension and that can be adjusted. And there are also new wraps on the market made from recyclable materials.”

Looking at adhesive dispensing, Thompson identified inconsistent application as an issue with manual application, resulting in too much or too little product in specific areas. In contrast, robots put exactly the right amount of adhesive in exactly the right place consistently every time. Thompson refers to a specific example where the manual application process was followed by a member of staff taking the newly bonded parts and wiping away the excess adhesive. “When we have automated those processes, there have been instances where the savings from using adhesive along has paid for the automation upgrade within six months,” he says.

Automation has the potential to transform the UK’s manufacturing competitiveness, productivity and sustainability, and be a key enabler when it comes to the re-shoring of manufacturing operations.

“Contrary to popular belief, the UK does make lots and lots of stuff,” says Thompson. “that can be anything from food and beverage to heavy machines and just about everything and anything in between. There’s a lot going on in the UK that we should all be proud to be part of and we shouldn’t automatically assume the best place to make something is outside of our shores.”

As Thompson points out, re-shoring not only promotes UK jobs, it also helps to protect the supply chain. Local manufacturing means more control and less impact from outside factors beyond our control. Re-shoring can also bring significant environmental advantages by reducing, the often hugely polluting, engird used to transport goods around the world.

Siemens

Keelan Toal from Siemens rounded off the day’s event with a presentation on digitalising supplier collaboration. The constant pressure to accelerate the journey from consumer insights to getting innovations into the hands of the customer has become ever more urgent as the world is constantly changing.

“Resources are becoming limited which means we have to do more with less," says Toal. “In other words, we have to become more efficient and flexible so we can deliver sustainable innovation and value to our customers.”

Critical to this is using data and information in a meaningful way that connects people and systems, he asserts.

Globalisation and market pressures are creating high times pressure drives whereby innovation cycles are reduced, global business that sees companies with multiple sites worldwide which need to work as one, and high levels of secrecy driven by innovation competition.

For companies manning many globally dispersed suppliers across multiple programmes can be a huge challenge. Issues include higher admin overheads when managing existing– and onboarding new – suppliers, inefficient data exchange, and data that is out of sync with the OEM.

“What we want is a standardised approach with consistent processes amongst all stakeholders, to simultaneously manage many supplier relationships,” says Toal. “Rather than relying on sharing documents and emails to collaborate and receive status updates, OEMs and their suppliers should work to a single source of truth.”

This article covers just a fraction of the content of the CDA Digital Conference. To view the individual presentations in full on demand visit:

cdadigitalconference.com