DELMIAWorks Helps Plastics Processors Deliver Industry 4.0 Potential to Manufacturing

As with everything else in technology, advances in manufacturing software provide significant benefits to plastics processors. Similarly to previous industrial “ages”, Industry 4.0 has the potential to deliver efficiency gains throughout your business, provide competitive advantage and, ultimately, positively impact your bottom line.

Industry 4.0 is a term often used to describe a manufacturing company’s journey through digital transformation. Its holy grail is tying together the physical manufacture of parts, the automation of those manufacturing processes coupled with a feedback loop of real-time data across the enterprise to drive greater efficiency.

Unfortunately, the reality can be very different. Tom Grigg, Solutions Architect at Proximity explains:
“When I go into manufacturing businesses that want to explore the benefits of Industry 4.0 they very often have a host of different systems in place. The issue with that, and there are many reasons why that particular approach comes about, is the business tends to have any number of data silos with information stored within those different, disparate systems with very little interaction between them.

“What we often find is that the data that’s captured by one system has potentially a huge benefit elsewhere within the operation. Having a single software application provides manufacturers with an overall view of the total operation. Whereas, if you’ve got lots of different systems, you have to programme connections between those disparate systems. The integration would be so complex that you wouldn’t really be able to determine the authenticity of the output.

“For example, if we have a quality failure, without the ability to correlate machine inspections, parameters and attributes to actual production you’re unable to pinpoint the exact time production failed and take remedial action. If there is a single system with seamless two-way communication, you can be alerted before those issues manifest and you can intervene before they become a problem. Only then can you take full advantage of all that Industry 4.0 promises to deliver”.

Start with the shop floor

When we start to consider the technology that is going to help manufacturers realise the Industry 4.0 vision, manufacturers should always start on the shop floor, says Grigg.

“Your manufacturing automation technology needs to have the ability to integrate digitally, as well as physically, so that data can be transferred from one system to another effortlessly. When we think about an injection moulding business for instance, we’re looking to connect information from lots and lots of different devices that are used by that organisation”.

At the heart of DELMIAWorks’ ability to connect data from your manufacturing shop floor is their manufacturing execution software (or MES for short), which enables two-way communication between systems to both track and capture production data in real-time and feed that into other modules within the wider ERP system.

Going back to our injection moulding business example, “real-time production data within your shop floor may include specific machine attributes, planned vs. actual production, energy consumption, part quantities, product quality, lot numbers, etc. The list goes on and on” says Grigg.

Where this whole process becomes most impactful is in the design to manufacturing process according to Grigg.

“We can use all this data to provide an incredibly powerful feedback loop. We don’t have to wait for a particular production run to finish before we can make improvements to the initial design or the production process to manufacture that part faster; reduce the number of steps needed to manufacture it, or the raw materials or energy to produce it; or improve production quality therefore minimising rejects or scrap  throughout to manufacturing process.

“That’s the really exciting bit and the part of Industry 4.0 that really drives concrete benefits for manufacturing businesses”.

Read more news from Proximity here.