Magic of Industry 4.0 in the journey to Manufacturing Excellence
Industry 4.0? Yes! Most of you might have heard of it. Industry 4.0 is all about the future in front of you. Hope you find every bit of this story interesting. To start simple, Industry 4.0 is where we build the integration between the digital world and the physical sphere we see. Does it sound complex? Think that you are a quality controller in a fabric manufacturing factory. You have to make sure that all the garments meet specific quality standards. However, in your factory, this inspection process to find defects is done through the naked eye. Naked eye!? Correct. It would help if you had an eagle eye and a whole lot of experience. It is where Industry 4.0 comes into play. What if you have a system to automate the quality control process, which can easily detect these defects in fabric? This is just one example where we have created the integration between the digital world and the physical sphere. There is a lot more. Let’s take a deep dive into the subject.
Industry 4.0 introduces a wide range of technologies that do wonders. The technologies of this new industrial revolution include the Internet of Things (IoT), Big data and Analytics, Cloud Computing, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and many more. These technologies can be applied to each and every pillar of a business. As we will be focusing on Manufacturing Excellence, let’s consider a Factory, an industrial site which is generally a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery and workers who manufacture goods or operate equipment that processes each item into another. In simple, let’s discuss how Industry 4.0 has converted Manufacturing into Smart Manufacturing!
Manufacturing is turning raw materials into finished goods using labor, equipment, tools and technologies. What is the productivity of Manufacturing? It depends on two main components; the input and output. Inputs could be any resources, such as raw materials, people, energy, information, etc., used in a manufacturing plant to get the expected output. These resources are always financial. However, we can put the key elements like time and skills into this “input” component. Outputs are the goods produced at the end of the process. Productivity is the ratio of this output to input. Now it is evident that greater productivity in Manufacturing leads to Manufacturing Excellence.
To improve the productivity, first, you must review the existing workflow of the manufacturing plant, which includes people, processes, equipment, and technologies. That means you should have sound knowledge of how everything works right now. Before you make any changes, understanding its current state is crucial.
As the next step in improving productivity, you have to identify the pain points in the current workflow. A proper analysis needs to be done in order to understand these. What must you do next? Yes, you are correct — addressing the pain points. We can do this in many ways, however as our focus is on digital transformation, let’s take the subsequent step as “Updating the Technology.” Get your mind ready! We are going to look into some hard-to-grasp applications of technology in the manufacturing process.
Integration of RFID and Big Data in Manufacturing — Production Tracking
RFID is the technology of Radio Frequency Identification. This technology employs electromagnetic fields to identify and track tags attached to objects automatically. It acts as a smart label. The data collected from these RFID tags are processed with real-time big data processing approaches. RFID tags on raw materials in the manufacturing process allow manufacturers to obtain real-time visibility of the work in progress.
Application of Artificial Intelligence in Quality Control process in Manufacturing
WiseEye, is an intelligent fabric defects detection system that grips advanced technologies, including Artificial Intelligence. This AI-based inspection system meets the requirements of textile manufacturers. A research team in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University has developed this system and they have applied Big Data and Deep Learning technologies as well.
The team has trained the model by inputting data of thousands of yards of fabrics to detect around 40 usual fabric defects with surprisingly high accuracy resolution up to 0.1 mm/pixel. This has been put on trial for more than six months in a real-life manufacturing environment. The tests have shown that this system is capable of reducing 90% of the loss and wastage in the fabric manufacturing process, which takes the overall performance of the manufacturing pillar to the next level.
Yes! AI can do wonders.
Do you want to know another exciting application of it? Continue reading!
Application of Artificial Intelligence in the BMW production system
Let’s take a look at the diagram below before reading up on what is happening here.
This includes a complicated yet wonderful application in Artificial Intelligence. BMW has released a software package that makes light work of creating Artificial Intelligence applications for object recognition. The core element of this product is the BMW Labeling Tool Lite. This tool enables users to easily label the objects in photos, an amazing solution to quickly build AI applications that accurately identify objects in images.
In the diagram, what you can see in the training phase is where they train the model’s algorithm using several images (as data) of the object they need to detect during the production process. Then using the algorithm, the model identifies patterns and detects the objects according to these patterns during the productive phase.
Using this trained model, they can identify the defects of objects too. After that the system can notify the user about these defects — yes, obviously this can be used in the quality control process. Moreover, this software package is used in many functionalities that can enhance the BMW production system.
These are only a few applications of Industry 4.0 technologies in the manufacturing process. There are many more interesting applications that portray the essence of Industry 4.0 that leads to Manufacturing Excellence. Especially in mass-produced goods such as apparel, fashion and footwear, technologies in Industry 4.0 act as catalysts in the scene. This digital transformation in the industry gradually converts Manufacturing into Smart Manufacturing. Now you know that Industry 4.0 is more than just a buzzword!
To conclude, the future in front of you is fascinating. Get your mind ready to witness the beauty of it!