Page 12 - Industrial Technology EXTRA 8th February 2021

quality, sustainability, flexibility, wastages and more data from other areas of the business, the
— that’s in addition to the obvious production gains consequences of this change will be realized ahead
of digitalization projects. of time.
Once objectives are confirmed, it is possible for Step 5: Find software to simplify the process –
each employee to determine the ideal status of a With knowledge from the previous steps,
facility based on their requirements. For instance, if manufacturers can evaluate how to achieve these
the maintenance engineer plans to achieve zero objectives with their existing technology. Usually,
unplanned downtime due to equipment breakdown, this is entirely achievable with the use of industrial
he or she can determine an ideal production control software, like Copa-Data’s zenon.
schedule for the machinery’s lifespan. This should However, this is also the step to consider
be replicated in all areas of the business, from whether other technologies are required to meet
determining cycle times to product delivery, through these objectives. For example, if a change in the
to the energy efficiency of the plant. previously mentioned production schedule is not
Step 4: Assess, then reinvest – Greater visibility possible with manual labor, could robotic
of data can also provide organizations with an technology be used to increase the speed of product
assessment of the costs, benefit and return on changeovers?
investment (ROI) of the changes they plan to make. Step 6: Implement and improve – Unlike the
Let’s imagine a production manager hopes to static investment of a piece of automated hardware,
reduce changeover times by rescheduling investing in connectivity delivers a constant feed of
production in a more optimal way. Using intelligent data in which insights can be drawn. As a result,
factory software, the predicted results of this connected factories provide an opportunity for
change can be automatically generated, along with manufacturers to continuously improve their processes
insights of how this could impact the rest of the site. While the futuristic smart factories first
What’s more, this data can be integrated with imagined at the 2011 Hannover Messe were largely
other areas of the business, such as enterprise focused on hardware and robotic automation,
systems like enterprise resource planning (ERP). connected factories that are driven largely by data
Let’s say that changes to the production schedule promise a more achievable – and often more
result in wasted materials — this could be possible advantageous – way for manufacturers to digitalize
in food, beverage, pharmaceutical applications or their facilities.
any sector with expiring ingredients. By integrating www.copadata.com

February 2021 • INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY EXTRA • p12