What about the INDUSTRIAL Internet of Things?

According to data published by the Office of National Statistics in February our national output per hour worked is 31 percent behind the USA and 27 percent behind both France and Germany. Differences will arise because of differing economic structure and levels of unemployment, but even allowing for these, the discrepancy is still alarming.

Under investment has to be part of the explanation. If the future is uncertain then holding off new investment and sweating the assets that you have makes a kind of sense. But as the recovery takes hold, pressure will build to streamline production, improve return on investment and meet international challenges.

Knowledge is power

Many UK manufacturers operate in a knowledge vacuum or at best with a historic view of factory shop floor performance. Walking the floor is often the only way that a manager can get a real-time appreciation of current activity.

In capital intensive industries especially, the goal is to achieve overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). There are three components to OEE that are critically important:

• Availability – this requires a clear definition of the operating state – asking key questions about the reason for stoppages to establish if they are avoidable and downtime can be minimised by better planning and scheduling of maintenance.
• Performance – this may be a simple matter of speed, but is more likely to be an issue of operations planning and methodology – so data is required to evaluate alternative strategies.
• Quality – maximising in-specification output – is the final and most crucial factor of OEE, requiring real time data for close control and eradication of scrap and rework.

Automating the measurement of these factors is the key to unlocking a greater return on capital investment and labour productivity. This requires the creation of a manufacturing executions system (MES) that reaches all shop floor processes. This can stream the most up to date production information to each operator, gather data from each machine and allow the operator to input and report current production status information.

Creating smart factories

Information interchange, real-time data gathering, instantaneous processing of this big data to give analysis and meaningful role-relevant information to each team member are the key elements of the Smart Factory. In the Smart Factory data is constantly available on real-time performance. Material shortages, machine outages, quality issues, longer than expected process cycle times, any aspect of sub-optimal performance, is immediately apparent. Managers are empowered because they can measure inefficiencies and intervene immediately to rectify them.

Every application is different. The Forcam Force shop floor management system has the ability to integrate machines of many diverse types. This include machines with non-standard interfaces and communication protocols and legacy equipment. Deep knowledge, acquired in integrating over 60,000 machines and processes, has enabled the company to develop plug-ins to address and integrate these diverse machine types.

Interoperability with other manufacturing and enterprise software systems was a primary goal of the Forcam Force development team. Real-time performance data can therefore be streamed directly into SAP, ERP, PLM, CAQ and TDM making these programmes more powerful and effective.

Access anytime, anywhere

Information can be presented on the full gambit of devices adapting the complexity of presentation to everything from a smart phone, through tablet and large desktop screen or HD TV. What is more, time zone, language and other barriers are removed so data is accurately synchronised and displayed appropriately. Cloud based smart factory data allows the manager travelling away from work to have secure access to real-time visualisation of plant performance, down to the machine level, using any internet connected device and to make real-time decisions to optimise production.