In November, BlechExpo 2017, one of the world’s largest trade fairs, dedicated to industrial automation – in particular to metal production and machining – was held in Stuttgart. The fair was a great opportunity to find out how quickly the technologies used in industry change, and what challenges companies face in the industry. It turns out that it is not sufficient to just follow specific and domain-related solutions.
BlechExpo perfectly demonstrates that every industry must open itself up to a much wider scope for change and utilize a full range of technologies, i.e. the Internet, data clouds, real-time production data analysis systems, or tools for the automatic management of the production process. With this, it is possible to achieve competitive advantage based on the ability to adapt virtually “overnight” to the changing business environment, such as the number of orders, or sometimes highly unusual and specific customer specifications.
The largest and most notable exhibitor at the fair was the German company Trumpf, the global leader on the metalworking market. The company assumes that by automating the production process, it will be possible to reduce the time needed for the manual configuration of the production process by up to 80%, as in its current state it is particularly troublesome for smaller or irregular orders. To achieve this goal, Trumpf designed and launched a pilot smart factory in Chicago, where all the machines used in the production process (e.g. lasers for cutting, as well as a line for reclaiming elements, picking up items, bending and sorting and loading a finished product) are connected to the network and managed by EMS and PLM-type systems. The company’s solutions are thus able to facilitate the implementation of small or unusual orders to a much greater degree – Trumpf’s systems are able to plan the production process in such a way that they “work in” smaller orders into standard mass-production. In this way, it is possible to not only optimize the time needed to complete a given series, but also significantly reduce the cost of unused materials.
The solutions proposed by the company also allow for ongoing connection and disconnection from the production process of individual machines or machine sets on a “plug-and-play” basis. Imagine that we need to increase the production capacity of our factory overnight by adding a few more machines to the dozen or so which we have at the moment. At the same time, we cannot afford downtime of more than about four hours a night. In such a situation, we simply insert the necessary devices, connect them to the network, and so the configuration process already runs completely automatically, so that we are able to increase production to the required level the next day.
Just a few years ago, the situation described above was only an engineering fantasy, whereas today it’s a reality which is starting to encroach into production. Industry 4.0 means not only efficient machines or robots, but above all a network of connections and data which is constantly flowing and analyzed, which allows companies to streamline the production process.
Trumpf also presented a very interesting solution in which the system allows the customer to view the current status of an order (e.g. analogically to logistics systems, where we can see at what stage and in what location our package is). By using the appropriate API, the target client can also “plug” this data into its own system to better plan and synchronize the production process further down the line. Here we have an example of an advanced system that not only accepts, distributes and controls orders from various customers, but also supports the later stages of the production process at companies further down the supply chain.
This is a direct implementation of one of the most important elements of the idea of Industry 4.0, that is, enabling the development of a network economy in which particular entities undertake their tasks more effectively through specialization and cooperation with other entities which implement other specialized tasks. Such a network must be based on the efficient transfer of data, which makes it possible to achieve synergy. The solutions which Trumpf presented at the fair enable the creation of such structures, which are sometimes very complicated but are efficiently connected to each other at the technical infrastructure level.
The Swiss company Bystronic also presented its innovative solutions, one of which is a fully automated metal machining and laser cutting process. Bystronic has combined the processes of storing materials, loading, cutting, collecting and sorting finished parts, enabling one person to handle the entire production process. To date, all these processes had to be serviced by separate work stations, which meant higher costs and a greater length of time needed to handle a given order. Such a production system also saves space in the production hall.
Bystronic provides for the possibility of full automation of the metal machining process, offering a set with the strongest 10kW laser on the market, a mobile unit for bending elements (for which the company received the award for the most innovative solution at this year’s BlechExpo) and the MES system created in cooperation with Lantek. In addition, Bystronic is also working on solutions for servicing machines using VR glasses and a mobile application, among others, thanks to which a technician can remotely diagnose errors or defects and change e.g. the factory settings of a given machine in the same way. In addition, Bystronic machines can be plugged into one network to enable data to be monitored regularly by MES and PLM systems and connected to other internal systems such as ERP systems.
The BlechExpo trade fair clearly shows trends in industrial automation and, in general terms, in the methods of managing the production process. The main players are trying to shorten the time taken from placing the order to the delivery of the finished product. They not only use advanced algorithms to control robots, but also data analysis, which means ERP systems can modify the production process themselves and analyze threats or indicate locations and activities that need to be changed and adjusted in “live” mode. The biggest challenge for contemporary industry is not the machines themselves, robotization, but the data that is downloaded, sent and processed continuously.
This is the data that is used in optimizing the entire production process, from ordering (e.g. small or unusual orders) to production (e.g. nesting, waste reduction, cutting time, and continuous production), to delivering the finished product to the end customer (e.g. just-in-time production and logistics, exchange of data between suppliers in the cloud).
As to whether the ideas proposed at this year’s BlechExpo in Stuttgart have worked or caught on, we’ll have the chance to find out in a year’s time. In November 2018 industry representatives will meet at the EuroBlech trade fair again to wow their competition and customers alike with their solutions. We’ll be there for sure!
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