Improving productivity combats rising material costs.

UK manufacturing can expect to face a challenging few years as it adjusts to life alongside the European Union.  Report after report has identified low productivity as a key challenge for all manufacturers. The recent weakness in the value of the Pound will help exporters, but to capitalise on new markets, but unless productivity can be improved, rising raw material costs will fritter away any advantage.

Global competitors are not standing still, as witnessed by the drive towards the fourth Industrial revolution/Industry 4 and IIoT Manufacturers can expect increasing speed of business change areas including scheduling, customer needs, costs of materials, business models, and technologies. At the same time, many manufacturing sites -particularly in the discrete industries have growing complexity in their operations, which makes it more difficult to change. For example, complexity is increasing with multiple product lines, varied production routings, dynamic customer demand, competition among products for the same production resources and compliance to government regulations.

Plantwide transparency

Seamlessly integrated automation components and integrated information flows throughout the entire industrial process chain are the keys to achieving flexible, customer-focused and economical production. Data on the availability of materials and machines must be transparently available at the touch of a button in the same way as the current process status information. Only access to complete information in real time can enable fast decisions and optimisation of all production processes, from order processing to the finished product.

The weak point of many systems is inadequate or missing IT connections between the production and management levels. In many plants, data is still recorded by hand and information is passed on personally from employee to employee. In addition to the great potential for error, including the possibility of accidental data losses, this also slows down the information flow -and often also the entire production process. Manually-executed production processes, for example in quality control, also often hinder maximum efficiency, preventing faster throughput and delivery times.

Integrated information flow

The seamless flow of information between production and management is no longer a dream for the future but daily reality.  Concepts such as Mitsubishi’s e-F@ctory, company management can rely on up-to-date and meaningful information. This simplifies, improves and speeds up decision making.

A recent greenfield site for the manufacture of servo motors a Mitsubishi Electric factory achieved a productivity increase of 80% compared to conventional manufacturing facilities, combined with faster delivery times. The time required to produce servo motor has been halved and that in a zero defects production facility without expensive wastage.

Scaleable for legacy manufacturing sites

An e-F@ctory solution can completely integrate factory equipment within business processes, using common systems, protocols and networks to bring these functions together. This can be achieved using a single communications network or even through the integration of multiple and disparate networks.

The control platform is highly scalable, capable of accommodating just a handful of I/O channels ranging up to several thousand. This makes it suitalbe for legacy manufacturing sites to monitor, or map, all channels concurrently, which means that business functions can be integrated more effectively.

The capital investment required to start achieving some, if not all the benefits of an e-F@ctory system can be relatively small, compared to the significant benefits that can be achieved. Most legacy/existing control systems can be utilised and unnecessary devices eliminated.