Apr 20, 2023
Smart manufacturing involves creating a more connected shop floor. The plant can bring together its manufacturing systems with its maintenance schedules and business planning systems. This creates significant advantages including the ability to collect and analyze real-time data and improved, quicker decision-making at various points within the production line. Unfortunately, not every shop floor is fully connected today, even in Malaysia.
These past few years have put the manufacturing industry through the wringer and added to the list of challenges it faces. There have been massive supply chain disruptions that have affected the manufacturing process. At the same time, there have been huge spikes in consumer demand for a range of products. Manufacturers understandably want to get ahead of this and ensure they can meet such demand.
Current challenges affecting manufacturing in Malaysia
Being able to forecast demand for products calls for good reporting tools.
Every plant is naturally keen to improve efficiency and keep costs low which they can do by modernizing processes, introducing automation, and systematizing workflows. All of these can assist in minimizing the time spent on labor-intensive tasks, reduce waste as well as optimize equipment usage.
And much like many other industry sectors, manufacturing faces its fair share of challenges:
- Labor shortages and quality of talent – Finding good quality candidates interested in this type of work is possible when the workplace is supported by technological capabilities to support human-led work
- Infrastructure – Plants need to lean on reliable, high-performance digital connectivity
- New technology adoption – These include the rising proliferation of AI (artificial intelligence) and data analytics tools. However, there are many barriers to this including a lack of awareness of options, the prohibitive upfront investment costs as well as resistance to change
- Regulatory framework – Legislative or regulatory changes can be complex. In turn, this increases operational costs and administrative burden, slowing things down
- Global economic factors – These include shifts in supply and demand, availability of natural resources, and input cost inflation
The increased rate of change, the pervasive use of technology, and the rise in connected devices, while bringing significant advantage, come with their own unique set of challenges. For example, greater reliance on connected devices calls for robust cybersecurity.
When the challenges above also include supply chain uncertainties, and the pressure to fulfill larger orders and to deliver them quickly, then there may also be product inconsistencies.
Plants do not just want to increase production capacity and labor performance – they also want to ensure that the goods are delivered according to the specifications set, consistently each time.
To do this, plants need to ensure they tick the boxes across several parameters:
- safety assurance at all times
- regulatory requirements and compliance
- robust cost management
- inventory transparency
- business continuity
- disaster recovery management
- innovation initiatives to support product development efforts.
What is one way to be assured that all of these boxes can be ticked off?
Introducing Edge Computing
Achieving all of these objectives is possible with the right technology. This is about having a fully-integrated and collaborative industry 4.0 manufacturing system that responds in real-time but also reports back relevant timely insights.
But what exactly is edge computing? It involves bringing data computation and storage close to the devices where the data is gathered. In other circumstances, such data would typically be moved to the cloud or a central data center.
By bringing data computation and storage closer to the device, there is reduced latency, better responsiveness, smoother operations, and improved performance of an application or equipment. Edge devices include IoT sensors, Edge gateways, smart camera and more. It may also involve highly automated industrial computing systems and servers.
In an Edge-to-Enterprise architecture, workers, operations, and data would be connected through HMI (human-machine interface) and MES (Manufacturing Execution System).
In an Edge system, IoT devices (such as smart sensors) and industrial gateways (devices to collect data from industrial machines and IoT devices) collect all manner of data (temperature, pressure, vibration, machine performance). Data is transmitted, processed, and filtered before being sent to a cloud-based enterprise system. It is the local processing that minimizes latency and improves overall efficiency.
In an Enterprise system, data collected from edge devices is sent to a cloud-based enterprise system which will analyze the data, developing insights with the use of advanced analytics and machine learning. These insights:
- optimize production processes
- reduce downtime
- improve machine performance
- assist with predictive maintenance and supply chain optimization.
Ultimately, there are many people across multiple layers of decision-making within a plant environment. There may be different roles, functions, and business outcomes across the organization and its various geographic locations. However, for these different business units to come together towards a common business goal, solutions and systems that can increase connection and present a single source of truth create a distinct advantage: empowered workers, real-time insights, and informed decision-making.
The advantage: a single source of truth
Edge computing helps in digital manufacturing and to remove some of the complexity associated with key processes and manage information overload. With processing occurring much closer to where data is gathered (as opposed to sending it to a centralized cloud or data server), business visibility is improved quickly which can lead to a reduction in energy consumption and fewer errors.
Other benefits include real-time data processing and analysis and improved data privacy and security. The latter is especially important given the rise in the frequency and sophistication of cyber-attacks and scams.
New edge devices can also be easily added or removed without disrupting the entire ecosystem. This allows for a modular approach, wherein enterprise businesses can scale their edge infrastructure according to their needs. Further, with the reduction in data transmission, there is overall bandwidth improvement and network efficiency. Engineering or maintenance projects may be accelerated, improvements and efficiencies may result in terms of system standardization and there may be better operator awareness and agility.
In conclusion, a platform-first approach leads to a more connected operational environment. This improves asset integrity, creates better environmental and regulatory compliance, and better coordination during plant turnarounds and upgrades.
Are you asking any of these questions: How do I manage my fleet of Edge devices remotely? How can I reduce latency and distribute the processing load on my network? How can I experiment with IIoT cost-effectively? How can I utilize the cloud to access applications and information in multiple locations?
If any of these questions apply to you, let’s talk, please get in contact with our Digital Transformation experts.
