Australian manufacturing is set to ride the Fourth Industrial Revolution wave, from the Federal Government’s renewed focus via its Modern Manufacturing Strategy, to COVID-19 fuelling the retooling of our existing manufacturing capabilities. By Helen Wong.
The manufacturing industry in Australia is facing a period of renewal and transformation. With more robotic density in manufacturing factories and warehouses comes the need for connectivity, since there is more data to consume. The ability to have low latency and secure connectivity at high speed is becoming critical to the future of manufacturing.
Local manufacturers are now looking to private 5G capabilities for this low latency and secure connectivity to improve the overall manufacturing process. In fact, some are looking at combining private 5G with optical infrastructure to create test beds for autonomous guided vehicles and autonomous guided robots to increase the accuracy and speed of tracking.
This testing has so far seen many opportunities that go well beyond the initial concepts that manufacturing businesses conceived, including addressing quality assurance, safety of employees, and making sure the right assets are at the right location at the right time. This integration of information with other members of the supply chain downstream brings an overall agility that would not be possible without 5G.
Adding AI capabilities
One of the promising outcomes of Industry 4.0 is that advancements in automation are leading to human operators shedding repetitive manual tasks and focusing on maintenance and up-skilling. To realise this goal, manufacturers will continue to collect the troves of machine data that the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) delivers. They will use artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse these data sets and act on the recommendations that AI delivers.
By way of illustration, manufacturers might already be getting data from a variable frequency drive (VFD) that controls an AC motor in a conveyor system. If that system does not have a native sensor that indicates when and if excessive heat and moisture are present, the operator might not be able to avoid a VFD failure, which could lead to other issues.
Data garnered from machines must be analysed somewhere. Depending on the use case and desired outcome, AI and machine learning (ML) applications can be deployed on-site, on an edge or in the cloud. Manufacturers that leverage AI and ML as part of their digitisation and automation strategy need to take in consideration the requirements (like application performance and latency) for data-driven automation to be successful. After all, what’s the point of gathering information about machines in real time if you can’t act on it quickly?
How technology enables Industry 4.0
Emerging technologies such as IoT, IIoT, AI, ML, 5G and multi-access edge computing (MEC) are foundational for creating a solution that supports Industry 4.0 use cases. The promise of Industry 4.0 lies not just in automation but real-time automation at scale.
Below are a few ways in which these technologies can help on the plant floor:
- Enable predictive maintenance. Product data management (PDM) software uses equipment data to evaluate the performance of assets in real time and minimises costly downtime. When that evaluation happens at the edge (MEC, for example), not only do manufacturers realise the benefits of real-time analytics, but costs are cut by eliminating round trips to the cloud. PDM helps manufacturers that want to be more efficient with their maintenance program and want to avoid downtime surprises.
- Bring in remote expertise. MEC and 5G networks can enable augmented reality (AR), such that a worker on the plant floor can use a smart mobile device to call for (and receive) help from a more experienced technician. AR enables both the remote technician and the on-site worker to “see” the situation on the ground so they can troubleshoot efficiently, which decreases the need for dispatching expensive help to the site. AR can also layer diagrams of what machine parts should look like and display guided tutorials that workers can use to diagnose problems on their own.
- Better inventory management. Another promising Industry 4.0 use case is real-time inventory management. By tagging raw materials, unfinished parts or finished products with purpose-built sensors, manufacturers gain real-time location visibility of their inventory. This location data can be integrated into warehouse management and supply chain management systems to enable visibility of selected inventory to upstream or downstream suppliers, which in turn helps strengthen supply chains.
The future of smart manufacturing
Advanced networking will underpin Industry 4.0, and MEC using private 5G will play a huge role too. While many large enterprises have embraced the promise of Industry 4.0, the democratisation of these technologies is making room for smaller original equipment manufacturers to dive in and reap promising results as well.
Helen Wong is Director of International Secure Network Product at Verizon.