Tablets displaying 3D models can complement the manufacturer’s drawings. Image provided by paperless parts
You have heard of Industry 4.0, but what does this actually mean? More importantly, what does this mean for small and medium-sized work shops? What is the impact on typical sheet metal manufacturers?
To gain insight, consider the experience of three companies with revenues between millions and tens of millions of dollars. Everyone has a unique perspective on what adopting Industry 4.0 technology means to their business. The approved sheet metal factory is the sheet metal processing workshop in Hudson, New Hampshire; Sweeney Metal Fabricators of Nashua, New Hampshire provides sheet metal processing and connected metal parts. And Century-Tywood of Holliston, Massachusetts, is a large contract manufacturer that mainly produces fabricated parts, CNC machining, stamping parts and electromechanical components.
There is no definition of Industry 4.0. Most of the definitions that do exist include buzzwords, such as industrial Internet of Things, cyber-physical systems, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. In short, Industry 4.0 is related to the fourth industrial revolution, which heralded the transition from analog and discrete data to digital and connected information. This means that all the data living in the different islands of your business can and may be collected through connected systems at some point to form an information basis, so that better decisions can be made through manual analysis or other means. It may be computer analysis.
This is where machine learning and artificial intelligence come into play. In the final analysis, this is the use of information to implement better practices to reduce bottlenecks, increase production speed and cut costs, thereby achieving higher efficiency.
When talking with these stores, it is clear that customers are encouraging their suppliers to adopt Industry 4.0 technology. Peter Marcoux, chief estimator of Century-Tywood, explained that most skilled buyers are between 45 and 65 years old. The new generation of buyers replacing these experienced buyers is technically far fewer.
Marcoux said: “The days of doing business with technical buyers who know exactly what to buy are over.” “New buyers often manage hundreds of items, but don’t really understand every item. A few years ago, buyers would almost know How to make parts. Not anymore, especially in large companies.”
The risk of this transformation is a change in values. There is a belief that highly skilled manufacturing operations are commodities, and all workshops are equally capable of producing any parts. But in fact, it’s not. Harry Ledgard, vice president of sales at Century-Tywood, explained this shift.
“New buyers are driven by reports. They have been trained in using the PLM (product lifecycle management) system and have grown up with the expectation that they are met instantly. Therefore, now they want fast quotes, immediate orders, and one-time processing. There is no need for repeated discussions. We choose to use tools that will make our solutions as close to this expectation as possible to stay competitive, and that’s what we did.”
His main question is: What will happen 10 to 15 years from now? Where is that knowledge cultivated? What can the store do to solve this problem?
Ledgard’s advice for a small factory is twofold. “Interpersonal interaction has always been valuable-maybe not as much as it used to be, this is a product of the electronic age-but face-to-face interaction is still valuable for building business relationships.
He continued: “It all boils down to speed.” “How fast are you responding to requests? The smaller guys are in trouble because they have to balance a lot of balls, so the offer takes longer. The key is to find out How do they speed up their response to customers. Most of these guys can’t open models! Organizers usually can’t. They just need to invest in technology.
Investing in technology is a good way to stay competitive. Steve Lynch is the former head of R&D at Rapid Manufacturing (now Rapid of Protolabs) in Nashua and is now the head of Approved Sheet Metal. He believes that in small factories The use of software is crucial, but he warned that “Industry 4.0 is not a substitute for skilled work in manufacturing plants. My concern is that stores will create a workforce that relies entirely on software to do their work, and people will become more skilled as a result. ”
This is very similar to the use of buyers and advanced PLM systems. Despite this fear, Lynch explained: “Becoming a cutting-edge store makes it easier to hire people. Workers want a high-tech environment, and so do customers. The challenge of becoming high-tech is to be able to quickly and iteratively change the way evaluation results Because of the need for documentation, standards such as AS9100 and ISO hinder these rapid changes and slow down progress.”
He acknowledged the importance of these quality systems, and the approved sheet metal is gradually passing AS9100 certification. But he insisted, “Industry 4.0 is not a job that saves a lot of money. It can help stores scale effectively, but it requires long-term investment to save long-term.” For ordinary workshops, there are still problems, where cash and Time is short, where is the best starting point?
Chris Sweeney, president of Sweeney Metal Fabricators, believes that there is not only a buzz behind Industry 4.0, but also sees the huge potential of the concept of manufacturing digitalization. He said that even if adopting new tools means making up-front investments for long-term profit, his company will still keep technology leadership in the first place. As Sweeney explained: “The best place to open a store is where they have the greatest demand.”
Chris often spends time regressing from daily operations to researching new technologies. Then he asked a question: “Which of these technologies can best help Sweeney Metal achieve our goals today?”
When figuring out where to start, it is important to understand the store’s value chain and break down where the discrete data is located. Consider performing value chain mapping exercises. These activities like improvement activities can help store owners understand the real challenges. Simply draw the process on the whiteboard to discover the surprising inefficiencies in the existing process and the opportunities for process automation.
When looking at the quote-to-cash cycle, store owners may find that their data exists in many different places, which makes it difficult to make decisions. Start with the customer quotation (RFQ). The data is stored in the e-mail inbox of the estimator and can also be stored in any queue system used by the store to track and prioritize offers.
Stores often use shared drives to store part files, which makes future search tasks full of challenges. So far, most of the data is digital. However, the reality is that most of the data about each quote and how the price is calculated is in the head of the estimator. From clarifying phone calls with customers to unstructured back and forth e-mails with suppliers, estimators are dealing with a lot of information. For most stores, this creates an obvious single point of failure.
When the drawings are finally printed (just like most people start the estimation process), things really start to become similar. Throughout the manufacturing industry, the scenario is the same: an estimator walks around the store with the drawing, soliciting feedback from experienced programmers or checking manufacturability with workshop personnel, while taking notes on the side of the drawing. At some point, this information is combined to form a final price, which is then sent back to the customer for review. Usually, the source of this information is not recorded in the document until the quote is sent. Then file or discard these mimics.
This is the first point where a large amount of data loss may occur in the process. There are some questions to ask yourself: Is all the information collected by the estimator during the quotation process entered into the system so that it can be viewed when the job is won? Does all paperwork enter the physical filing system? Or do you print these drawings from scratch when you receive the order and start the purchase order (PO) review like never before? To be honest, most stores will answer “yes” to the last question, which will bring a lot of repetitive work to your most experienced people.
Here, the concept of Industry 4.0 can be used to enhance the quotation process and convert from analog to digital, which is a digital conversion. Consider the potential information that may be collected during the quotation process to help you improve business efficiency.
Based on past quotes, do you know how quickly you must respond to each job to provide you with the best chance of winning the job? Do you know whether your customers value delivery time rather than price, and what type of work and quantity? How soon will your customers see your offer after sending it? Will this affect the likelihood of them placing orders? Does the time of the day you send the offer important? Are there specific customers you shouldn’t spend time quoting for? When should you take the time to really sharpen your pencil to make sure your cost/price is truly accurate? All of these are questions that can be answered after the data is collected and transformed into information. However, this requires you to have the correct system to perform this operation.
After placing the order, the materials and hardware were ordered, the work was programmed, and the manufacturing process started. In most stores, this is a manual process of manually checking purchase orders, reducing purchase orders to external suppliers, printing routers and scheduling work. Each manual step in this process provides new opportunities for automation. After the work starts, data can be collected in multiple places and converted into useful information.
Likewise, not all programmers are the same. How long does it take to program a new order? how much time is required? Is this driven by volume or complexity or the actual quote time? Does your programmer know the time required to find a job on the shop floor to maintain the estimated programming and setup time? Do you know which employees are most effective in different types of work?
Many shop owners will answer some of these questions because they have been doing this for decades and are experts in business. The challenge is, if there is no suitable digital system to capture this information, how will the new owner know when it is their turn to run the store?
The Industrial Internet of Things involves embedding computing devices in every machine to allow data to be transmitted over the network without human intervention. There are many opportunities to use this Industry 4.0 technology throughout the workshop. Every operation performed by the part before leaving the shop provides an opportunity for sensors and data collection. The use of machine monitoring software has become more and more common, but store owners often say that they just don’t know what to do with the information once they are collected.
Job shops are different from long-term contract shops in that they are managing various jobs at any given time. This makes it more difficult to find machine and operator performance trends. This is not to say that machine monitoring has no value, it just requires careful consideration and intentional application of investment in this field.
In all these stores, in the final analysis, investment in technology and continuous improvement are back to taking care of the most important aspect of every job-the customer. In today’s world, buyers do not understand the manufacturing process and visit the store irregularly. It is no longer enough to rely on the store to deliver quality parts on time. You must respond quickly to customers, communicate clearly and manage expectations.
If you cannot handle these initial aspects of the job, how can the buyer believe that you will be able to deliver complex parts on time? Simplified communication is the best way to impress your customers, that you are a modern store that uses technology to operate effectively. As Chris Sweeney explained: “Buyers want to work with stores that are at the forefront.”
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Post time: Nov-03-2020