Considering this uncertainty, listed below are answers to 5 most commonly asked questions which we hear during our interactions with manufacturers about Industry 4.0 adoption, implementation, and ROI:

1.We have been asked to implement Industry 4.0 in our factory, but don’t know where to start?
Start by conducting an in-depth analysis of your current status vis-à-vis your business goals. Then, look at areas of your manufacturing setup that you think will benefit the most from smart manufacturing. Capitalize on the results you achieve, and then go for a phase-wise implementation. Such an approach will not only allow you to clearly assess the opportunities (and challenges) you face, but will also help you spread costs over time and maximize ROI in the long run.

2.We have a lot of old machines that work efficiently and don’t want to get rid of them. Is it still possible to attempt a “smart” manufacturing model?
The short answer is yes!
It’s a myth that adoption of industry-4 means getting rid of legacy machines. Almost every manufacturer has legacy machines, and Industry-4 systems have to integrate with these. Industry 4.0 works on the concept of interoperability – if your current infrastructure is capable of communicating with existing and new systems, you can reap all the benefits from the smart manufacturing setup. So, it is very important for business leaders to demand this from solution providers and include legacy machines in smart manufacturing initiatives.

3. How can we assess our preparedness for implementing Industry 4.0?
There are some crucial things to keep in mind with respect to the products you manufacture, the operations you run, your supply chain as well as your overall business strategy

• Are your existing machines or systems customizable or up-gradable?
• Do you use the cloud to run your operations?
• Have you implemented IT security solutions across key areas of your manufacturing setup?
• Do you have plans to make your current processes compliant with required industry regulations?
• Are your business metrics indicative of your production process efficiency?
• Is your leadership supportive of the Industry 4.0 initiative?
• Are your employees ready for the transformation?

Are different departments open to enterprise-wide collaboration to drive improvements?If your current manufacturing setup meets these criteria, there is no reason why you should delay the implementation any further. However, if it doesn’t, it might be worthwhile to first identify areas for action. After all, when you invest so much in an initiative, you should be able to achieve the benefits you deserve.

4.Will adoption of Industry 4.0 impact morale on shop floor?
Although Industry 4.0 opens up a world of possibilities for improved efficiency, the transformation doesn’t happen without challenges. The adoption is often met with some resistance from employees.

The truth is, Industry 4.0 is only a means to supplement the human workforce; it will in no way replace or take away human jobs, it will only help them perform better.

5. How do we calculate benefits from intangible returns from the system?
As smart manufacturing takes over the shop floor, one major worry manufacturers have is calculating the ROI, mainly because tangible benefits are difficult to quantify. The ROI of any smart manufacturing initiative should be measured in terms of productivity improvements, additional revenue generation or cost savings achieved from reduced downtime, just-in-time maintenance. Please remember the system will show you the mirror and it is up to your people to undertake improvement initiatives.

• Start by defining a measurement metric
• Once the implementation is complete, baseline current status in the metric
• Closely monitor the metric thereafter and review with concerned people
• Assess if you are able to generate additional revenue post-implementation – either in terms of reduced waste or acquisition of new customers.
• See if there is a considerable improvement in the productivity and efficiency of your employees.
• Determine if you are able to save additional costs – either by running maintenance activities more efficiently or troubleshooting issues before they cause any interruption in production.
• And lastly, see if you are able to improve production speed and efficiency and drive value faster.

It’s exciting time to invest in Industry 4.0
While it is widely believed that Industry 4.0 makes more sense for large enterprises who have the capital and resources required for an end-to-end implementation, in reality, it can benefit every manufacturing setup – irrespective of how big or small they are.

My sincere thanks to Dr. Arvind Tilak, Mrs. Sujata Tilak and Mr. Umesh Chavan for providing their insights for this post.

The post Top 5 Commonly Asked Questions About Industry 4.0 Adoption, Implementation, And ROI first appeared on Industrial IoT Solutions Provider.

The success of Industry 4.0 initiatives depends a lot on ‘business first’ strategy and appropriate adoption of technology to serve business goals. IIoT implementation extends beyond the technology and the sensors and the automation and the machines that create this connected network. The hallmark of Industry 4.0 lies in the open and collaborative environment it creates – and along with the technologies in use, it is the people and the processes that make up this new manufacturing environment. So, what is the blueprint for success?

There are multiple stages in adoption

• • Strategy
  • Roadmap

• Planning and Budgeting
• Implementation(s)
• Post-Implementation

Strategy
The strategy has to revolve around business (products and services), people, assets and infrastructure. Evaluate your current business goals in all these areas and think about changes expected in future. Then build an IIoT strategy that will support your current and future needs.

You should also identify broad areas of application of IIoT. These include Digital Engineering, Smart Manufacturing, Digital Supply Chain, Smart Services, Digital Workplaces and more. Evaluate how applications in these areas will deliver value and fulfill your business goals.

For example,

• Digital Engineering can be employed to create Digital Twins, enable more collaboration in R&D, or be used for digital modeling and simulations.
• Smart manufacturing promises production improvements, prescriptive and predictive maintenance and consequent quality improvements.
• Digital supply chain provides E2E visibility, better supply-demand planning, and smart warehousing.
• Smart Services help in smart asset management and creation of new business models such as the pay per use business model.
• It also helps in providing multi-channel customer support.
• Creating a digital workplace includes accounting for mobility solutions, workplace security, and digital HR.

Roadmap
Building roadmap starts with creating cross-functional teams that will drive IIoT initiatives. They have to consider following aspects

• Deciding the approach towards adoption – local or global approach | top-down or bottoms-up approach
• Identifying the pain points these initiatives shall solve
• Deciding priorities
• Identifying applications and their phases

Whatever is your roadmap, please ensure that you start small, learn and then scale up!

Planning
Planning has to focus on – people, infrastructure and partners/solutions.

Engaging the Workforce

Identifying the Right Partner and Solution

There are a number of touchpoints that go into making a smart manufacturing solution. When evaluating the partner and the solution some points of consideration should be:

• Flexible connectivity options
• Solution features
• Ease of configurability
• Integration abilities
• Ability of architecture to scale
• Customization capabilities
• Ecosystem support
• Pricing and Licensing

Interested to read more?

Budgeting

Budgeting forms a critical part of the IIoT implementation plan. There are some indirect costs to be incurred and that needs to be budgeted properly. This includes infrastructure upgrades, security of connected assets etc. A key budget item is internal costs in terms of time commitment of various stakeholders.

For details, please read What goes into Costing of IIoT Project ?

Implementation

Once all above steps are successfully completed, you are ready to embark on the implementation phase. Taking up one or more roadmap items, organizations have to work collaboratively with their internal teams and the solutioning partner to get the best outcomes.

This infographic provides a list of tasks during implementation. As is obvious, it’s a collaborative project.

Successful implementation of IIoT solution is as much dependent on internal stake holders as it is on solution provider. For this it is critical that ‘Internal Owners or Champions’ are assigned to the project. Champions have to work with solution provider throughout implementation phase and beyond. They have to develop deep understanding of the solution, mobilize required internal resources from time to time for specific tasks, ensure timely support to end users as well as their training and hand holding.

There are several challenging items in above list. For example, designing most optimum connectivity solutions. Another one is verification of data / results. This seems straight forward, but the key is to ensure that all scenarios of shop floor working are captured and results verified in each case.

Thus with proper planning and ownership from internal champions and solution providers, IIoT implementation will go live successfully.  However, the buck does not stop here. The post-implementation phase starts and it includes periodic review of solution, ROI calculations, enhancements etc. But that’s a subject for another article…

This article was originally published at http://blog.plantautomation-technology.com/blueprint-for-successful-iiot-implementation/

The post Blueprint for Successful IIoT Implementation first appeared on Industrial IoT Solutions Provider.

By instilling a culture of continuous improvement and waste minimization, it has helped manufacturers in reducing operational complexity, optimizing inventory levels, and improving productivity.

Now imagine if manufacturers take an integrated approach to implement lean manufacturing with smart manufacturing! The valuable synergies manufacturers can generate through lean and smart manufacturing or Lean Industry 4.0 is phenomenal.

According to a report by BCG, when lean manufacturing or smart manufacturing is applied alone, it can reduce conversion costs by approximately 15%, whereas the integrated Lean Industry 4.0 approach reduces conversion costs by as much as 40%. Furthermore, the integrated approach can reduce costs related to poor quality by 20% and work-in-process inventory by 30%.

The Lean + Smart Approach

Although manufacturers have been using lean principles and tools for decades, with increasing competition, rise in customer demands, and the sheer complexity of operations, many find that lean management, in isolation, is not sufficient to address operational challenges.

Although lean principles help in improving production speed, they do not integrate the different processes to provide visibility into the entire value chain. Lack of visibility impairs production efficiency, as failures are difficult to detect and rectify. The longer it takes to identify failure, the more damage is done due to excessive waste and angry customers. What lean then needs, is a modern approach to deal with complexity, that can provide end-to-end insight into processes, and further improve productivity.

With smart manufacturing, through the use of modern technology, aiming to boost speed, efficiency, and coordination on the shop floor, manufacturers are now looking to take a smart approach to their lean management initiatives. By bringing lean manufacturing and smart manufacturing principles together, manufacturers are hoping to reach the next level of operational excellence: from reduced waste, improved operational efficiency to better synchronization, aggregation, and standardization of processes across the shop floor.

Manufacturers are soon realizing that the lean + smart approach is the only way to succeed in today’s competitive and complex landscape.

The Benefits Of Lean Industry 4.0

Although both lean manufacturing and smart manufacturing support the objectives of operational excellence, they apply different principles to achieve these goals.

While lean manufacturing reduces complexity and cost by eliminating waste and non-value-adding activities, smart manufacturing makes use of modern technology like sensors, robotics, augmented reality, cloud computing and analytics to increase transparency, improve communication, and adapt to change.

By merging lean manufacturing and smart manufacturing, manufacturers can leverage the best of both worlds to take operational excellence to an entirely new level. Here’s what happens when lean manufacturing meets smart manufacturing:

• Visibility: As factories move from being a series of siloed production lines to a tightly integrated ecosystem of connected devices, Lean Industry 4.0 provides end-to-end visibility that allows production managers to oversee operations of all equipment – in real time. Such visibility not only helps in optimizing performance, but it also provides timely insight into issues or challenges – allowing managers to take measures for improved throughput.
• Integrated supply chain: Waste elimination through lean, when combined with horizontal and vertical system integration through smart manufacturing results in an integrated supply chain. With every aspect of the shop floor connected – enterprise systems, IT, operational systems, machines, and devices – Lean Industry 4.0 provides a holistic view of the entire value chain. Such integration helps enhance operational efficiency while allowing managers to improve time-to-market.
• Agility: As the manufacturing landscape gets increasingly complex, manufacturers need to respond and adapt to changes quickly. Lean tools, along with sensors and smart devices, allow manufacturers to remove non-value-adding activities from the shop floor, and significantly accelerate the production process. With the ability to automatically make changes to production schedules, Lean Industry 4.0 allows manufacturers to keep pace with the changing environment while adding value at each stage.
• Productivity: Equipment failures and breakdowns lead to high inventory levels and low customer satisfaction. Preventive and predictive maintenance algorithms help in boosting overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), while drastically reducing downtime. By using advanced analytics algorithms and machine-learning techniques, Lean Industry 4.0 allows manufacturers to analyze huge amounts of data collected by sensors and identify potential breakdowns before they occur – thus reducing disruptions and minimizing unnecessary downtime and replacement costs.
• Speed: As manufacturers seek to increase product variants while reducing batch sizes, they struggle to traverse through the complexity of production planning. Lean Industry 4.0 allows them to react to deviations in production in real-time, identify issues, and update employees on changes to be made to production plans. By consolidating the data collected from various sources in an integrated value chain and feeding it into AI algorithms, manufacturers can make changes to production schedules based on various criteria as efficiency, lead time, and customer priority, and ensure the faster rollout of the measures throughout the shop floor.
• Quality: Quality is becoming a requisite for customer satisfaction. Manufacturers who ship poor-quality products to customers incur substantial costs in recalling products, manufacturing replacements, and shipping them. Lean Industry 4.0, through the use of self-inspection tools and data-driven analytics, help in reducing the likelihood of errors and increasing the rate and speed of error detection. Access to reliable context data and the ability to conduct detailed tracking helps unearth the root cause of errors while allowing real-time monitoring of process parameters for improved quality.
• Safety: With safety defining the foundation of successful manufacturing businesses, Lean Industry 4.0 allows for improved working conditions. Through the use of smart sensors and devices, shop floor managers can detect hazardous working conditions, provide alerts when safety is compromised, and reduce the rate of mishaps. Detailed tracking of incidents helps in periodic compliance checks while enabling managers to identify areas of improvement as well as take preventive measures. What’s more, immersive training in a virtual environment can help reduce the high accident rate among new hires and train them to always follow safe practices.

Drive Operational Excellence

In the realm of manufacturing, lean is a well-established concept that has helped improve productivity and customer experience for countless organizations. Enter smart manufacturing, and aspects like IT-OT integration, IoT and advanced data analysis are allowing organizations to gain a clearer understanding of the entire value chain to drive improvement opportunities and ultimately gain competitive advantage.

In the modern manufacturing era, the integration of lean manufacturing and smart manufacturing can help companies reach the highest level of operational excellence. Through continuous improvement, waste elimination, connected technology, and analytics, Lean Industry 4.0 can help companies to unlock the true potential of both concepts and enjoy operational excellence for years to come.

The post When Lean Manufacturing Meets Smart Manufacturing first appeared on Industrial IoT Solutions Provider.

At Ascent Intellimation, we have delivered many successful implementations. These are helping our clients in building a dependable data platform for real-time decision-making and bringing in overall improvements in every KPIs that is important for manufacturing entities. Apart from delivering a very robust and flexible platform, we have topped this up with very specific domain-driven deliverable that make our solutions click instantly.

What are the industry needs?

When we started on our journey of building and implementing PlantConnect, we were not actively looking at domain-specific details. In fact, as a technology company, we were proud to say that for us, data is data whether it comes from a heart monitor or an ATM or a CNC machine. But, we very quickly learned that this is only partially true. This realization was based on the following feedback from our users.

1.     Most of the manufacturing entities, and I am sure this true for other domains also, wanted a solution and not necessarily software. And our journey to building a solution on top of the software began.

2.     Vertical-driven analytics, reports, productivity, and visualization are the most essential deliverable that clients hold in their hands. That started the development of verbalized solution complete with all these details.

3.     Finally, manufacturers want a solution that can be deployed quickly and seamlessly and that can start delivering value almost immediately. These could be low hanging fruits but are very important for internal sales. One can always add more specific company flavors later, but basic solution must be almost “out of the box”. (which is not completely possible though!)

In simpler words, manufacturers want solution providers to speak their language and want them to see the world from the manufacturing perspective and not from the software perspective.

For example, speaking of our experience, when we said, give us an SRS document for your requirement, we were not welcomed. But if we said we know your industry to some extent but please share your expectations, it worked! They liked that we were making efforts to understand their issues and we have teams which understand their world.

How we Blended Technology and Domain Expertise in our IIoT Solution

These localisations and learning helped us redraw our product strategy. Apart from the technology part of the solution, which will never finish in a true sense, we started bringing on board domain experts and people with hands-on experience. Their inputs on what are common pain points and where easy solutions can be built proved to be very valuable.

This was very actively reciprocated by our users and clients who very enthusiastically shared industry and vertical insights. Many senior users walked us through their processes and educated us in the solution that will deliver the highest value to them and other internal stakeholders.

We drove and continue to drive this vertical driven approach, and we focus on following components of our solution. We strive to make these specific to industries and verticals and tailored to their requirements.

1.     Use cases: Each industry and company have unique practices, people, and culture. Also, each industry has unique use cases and problem statements for which a digital platform can provide solutions. Our domain experts understand these issues and design solutions for these. With this, our solutioning team goes with a very strong understanding and clear message of not only clarity on problems and but also solutions for the same.

2.     Analytics: Real-time analytics drive value and these are leveraged by stakeholders. As one can appreciate, analytics for each vertical and company are very specific, and what is not useful becomes an overhead. With the help of domain experts, we have invested substantially in building these analytics and outputs. Our sales teams start the process sales not with the technology, but what will users get from the solution and targeted and specific analytics are a great argument here.

3.     Reports and Visualization: The argument for analytics is applicable to reports and visualization as is. These are other sets of components which are leveraged every minute by the stakeholders.

4.     Data: In the industrial environment, acquiring the right data is a huge challenge. Apart from the complexities due to equipment of different generations and different makes (aka legacy systems), inter-operability becomes a big issue. We have built specific drivers to enable this data acquisition and have tried to make these almost seamless. We have not reached their yet but will be there soon!

5.     Data Quantity: Apart from the challenges of inter-operability, in an industrial asset, there are a large number of data parameters that are available. We take help of domain experts to trim the data sets and ensure that KPIs drive as to what data should be acquired, analysed and stored. This is very important for large systems in terms of performance and scalability.

Our most successful IIoT implementations have the right combination of domain experts and technology experts working together closely to achieve common business goals. Is your experience similar to this?

The post Winning the Smart Manufacturing game – Technology topped up with Domain Expertise first appeared on Industrial IoT Solutions Provider.

Smart Manufacturing or Industry 4.0 over Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is taking the manufacturing sector by storm. According to a research, IIoT market is estimated to reach $123.89 Billion by 2021. By connecting all aspects of manufacturing in a smart network for improved optimization, control, and monitoring, IIoT extends the IoT concept onto the production floor. It introduces efficiency optimization to the manufacturing process, and cuts down production costs, enhances work safety and ultimately provides a much higher user satisfaction. With IIoT opening plenty of opportunities in automation, optimization, intelligent manufacturing and industrial control, it is natural for manufacturers to embrace the concept in order to move towards more efficient ways of production, new ways of servicing customers and creating new revenue models.

Here is a 10-point guide for manufacturing companies to strategize and implement their IIoT initiative:

1. Clarify business outcomes and ROI: Many businesses looking to embark on the IIoT journey are not sure of the benefits. Therefore, I recommend that start by identifying opportunities and requirements. Assess operational pain points which will be best low hanging fruits and validation. Identify current process challenges and shortcomings. These could range from technical causes, process improvement demands specified by executive management, competitive pressure, poor agility due to legacy systems, among others. For each case, presenting the pain points and challenges up front makes all the difference.

2. Understand interoperability of key processes: A prime requisite for any IIoT initiative is interoperability of assets and processes. Since every operation might involve numerous disparate and proprietary tools and processes, understanding interoperability between them and planning how they will be connected to achieve operational goals is important. Record and organize all devices and register corresponding processes to chart out details and identify specific limitations or bottlenecks.

3. Evaluate associated costs: Calculating the ROI of a massive investment like this can be difficult, especially when the manufacturing operation is a small part of a much larger business. Uncovering potential hidden costs and savings of a connected, IIoT solution investment requires identification of explicit, as well as projected, operational costs and savings. Carefully formulate savings projections and combine it with a payback timeline on the initial investment to calculate the actual costs. With a good solution partner and your commitment, you should be able to look at 6 – 24 months’ pay back time line.

4. Think about legacy systems: A common and substantial challenge to any IIoT initiative is the presence of proprietary legacy systems and old machines. Since legacy systems are incapable of meeting demands of modern technology like sharing data in real time, it is important to take inventory of the devices and equipment across the network. There are ways and methods to connect even such assets onto an aggregator IIoT solution. More on this in my next blog.

5. Ensure leadership involvement and commitment: Success of IIoT initiative like any other strategic initiative requires retooling entire organization, starting from top leadership down to operational levels. These initiatives are going to impact business and revenue models, go-to-market strategies and organizational structure, processes, skills, and capabilities. This cannot happen without the support, understanding, and dedication of people on all levels in the organization, especially the leadership. Continuous education, discussions, and leadership involvement are critical to manage the transition to a new reality and derive maximum value.

6. Choose the right partner: For manufacturing organizations of all sizes, IIoT is the digital transformation that will create new ways to acquire and analyze the humongous amount of data and turn that data into intelligent outomes to solve challenges and problems. However, the challenge for many companies is where and how to start? Firms embracing IIoT should begin by choosing the right partner who can help them in deploying the solution in the right manner. Since technology partners have sufficient experience and expertise in similar enterprise-wide implementations, they know how to best use process data to enhance capabilities as well as address control-related issues across the enterprise and deliver efficiency gains.

7. Start small: Starting small is the biggest key to the success of any IIoT project. It’s a good idea to begin with a project that covers a sub portion of entire process and where some critical and immediate pain areas have been identified. Such a project will help throw up certain intrinsic factors that must be addressed. Such a small but successful project will build good “brand” within the company and scaling will be easier. Targeting low-risk applications with a defined ROI can be another approach in identifying first project. Objective is to instill confidence and provide the right experience required to tackle progressively more complex challenges.

8. Enable collaboration: The true promise of IIoT is as much about devices as much about people who operate them. Organizations that think about connecting people and devices on single platform will be in a better position to optimize their operations. It is only when organizations enable smart collaboration across their organization that the lines between operations, reliability, supply chain management, and other disciplines become less rigid. If an IIoT plan doesn’t include collaboration, then it probably should be rethought. Using IIoT, Airbus is driving the future manufacturing processes through the intersection of people, data and intelligent machines.

9. Connected – that is the key: After achieving initial wins from small-scale IIoT projects, companies can aim to achieve further efficiency gains by connecting departments or individual units with connected technology. Transition from siloed, stand-alone systems and processes to a smart ecosystem of smart, connected devices that gather real-time information from sensors, centralized aggregated data and integrated applications to turn data into insights and action will be the real big picture. A fully connected manufacturing process can enable a seamless flow of information and improve operational efficiency.

10. Ensure security: Since any IIoT initiative involves a plethora of devices, components and applications, looking at security from an end-to-end perspective is critical. With 39% of companies considering privacy and security as the most significant barriers to IoT investment, security should be an important concern for IIoT as well. Have the right security measures in place for systems that collect, monitor, process and store IIoT data and adhere to regulations and best practices regarding the protection of data and information.

Towards a New Era of Growth

With new IIoT connections expected to grow to 18 million by 2021, the pace at which organizations are moving towards Industry 4.0 is simply breath taking. Benefits that IIoT brings to the table are myriad: from increased automation to a reduction in error, an increase in production efficiency as well as reduction of costs. Add to it the impact of IIoT on quality control and maintenance. Convergence of people, data and smart devices will have radical impacts on the productivity, efficiency and operations of industries around the world. With so much to offer, there is no doubt that IIoT will transform companies and countries, and open up a new era of economic growth and competitiveness.

Please visit www.aiplindia.com for case studies and use cases of adoption and success of PlantConnect from Ascent Intellimation

The post 10-point Guide for Manufacturing Companies to Plan and Implement Smart Manufacturing/ IIoT Initiative first appeared on Industrial IoT Solutions Provider.