The Next Step Towards Smart Factories

By OEM Update Editorial November 30, 2021 7:29 pm

Industry experts expressed optimism about growing robotics education needs for future manufacturing, role of digital twins, sharing their insights about digital transformation and how smart factories can help India become a manufacturing hub.

Smart factory including information technology (IT) and operations technology (OT) represents transition from traditional automation, digitalization, AI, robotics, digital twins ready printing to an integrated and flexible system. Manufacturing organizations need to integrate AI and machine learning, since usage of industrial robots and automation has grown at an exponential rate in the manufacturing industry creating digital / smart factories.  

The programmable automation i.e., Numerical Control (NC) machine tools that run on program communicate with other machinery, people, and even robots for material handling to bring transformation in the supply chain. Machine Learning and AI provide real time and predictive analytics on production equipment. That enables manufacturing operations to improve quality, reduce downtime and enhance security. 

OEM Update organised an interactive panel discussion which engaged the distinguished experts Anup Wadhwa, Director, Automation Industry Association, John Ignatius, Local Business Line Manager – General Industries, ABB Robotics India., Bhavesh Mehta, National Sales Head, OMRON Automation India., and Ramakrishnan Venkatraman, Director – Sales, Dassault Systems to deliberate upon ‘Manufacturing in India: Transition to Smart Factories.’ 

We are in the digital era and empowering people. Smart manufacturing is the next industrial revolution. New entrants are making inroads into the smart manufacturing market with respect to growth trends, 

Common challenges and the future of manufacturing 

Anup remarked, well, historically, we stand as a nation in terms of our production, efficiencies, and rework our quality, energy, etc. Now, those to my mind are going to become basic. What is going to change as a game changer is going to be the ability to customise products for customers in smaller lot sizes. Ideally, you should be able to reach a large size of one, which is called personalised manufacturing. But even to get there, you have got to look at a very high degree of OEE, especially when you do change over. 

Now, most of our mechanicals have been put into like brick and mortar, they will almost be cemented. So that’s not going to come easy. And that is why I said, the challenge for us right now is while we want to create a brave new world, we have to do something like we did in the pandemic to first survive. So the majority of our SMEs now need to start generating profit by stopping their leaks. And for which, as we say, until you measure something, you never know how good or bad you’re performing. So if there is one word, which says, what is the next big thing going to come in manufacturing. 

Certainly smart manufacturing has been conceived, designed, engineered and promises the world where we will be able to give maybe two hours of our machine to a customer and say do whatever you want. And an extension of that going forward would be, a lot of capital investments in future factories would perhaps be available on rental or a service, you would not need to buy a diesel generator set. 

Like today, I have electricity in my house, but I don’t need to have a Digi set. I’m getting it from the grid and I’m paying as per use. So companies will come up with conveyors, they will come up with CNC machines, they will come up with Digi sets to install. Let us have a profit sharing arrangement like the Xerox machines, the more you photocopy, the more the retailer gets, and the more the supplier of the machine gets. 

Majority of manufacturing space to get into a smart space 

Elaborating on this, Bhavesh said, I think we have started the journey. So to say, Narendra Modi, our Prime Minister is saying that Make in India is going to grow up with the time and post Covid scenario, most of the manufacturers like from China are also thinking of putting up manufacturing units or coming up in India. The second best choice after China is, certainly, we will have a large manufacturing scale for us to cater to not only India, but also the entire world. And that will call for a ramped up adaptation of the smart factory and the solution. So, though it is difficult to suggest, it is going to be a very fast gradient if I have to choose this word for the next couple of decades for sure. So this is going to stay. 

Yes, the smart factory ramped up production is going to stay for at least next two decades, like probably the way how we moved up in 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, the pace must be faster, pace will be faster and not every time as we say not the early adopters are always at the best advantage. We can always learn from other countries or other manufacturing processes in other parts of the world. And then, we can implement it the first time right, there are more chances or likelihood for India to become first to cater to the world. So, I think it is a better operation that is possible. In manufacturing, the defence sector is giving a lot of promising news in terms of manufacturing. 

Manufacturing practices and do we still resist robotisation 

John Ignatius says, my observation here is that, today we are talking about robots as a tool to increase productivity. So, if I have a little bit to think about from the point of a customer, not from a point of supplier, what I see is the time taken to get the capital back. So the return on investment is a much stronger argument not from the technical side, but more from the cost perspective, this has to change. 

When a customer or some user of a robot is seeing a clear improvement, in terms of productivity, in terms of efficiency, in terms of production, the rework, then there is a strong argument to go for robotics, so this is something that has to come. I think Anup said that he made a comparison. When a decision of robotisation is done in a European situation, it’s more than for efficiency and productivity. So, I can very clearly see that some of the applications which are dull, dirty and dangerous, I think there is a very fast adoption of robots, 

As you would know, none of the spot welding applications in an automotive OEM is done manually. Typically, automotive has pretty much adapted to the concept of automation. But what we see is that, globally also, and even in India also, the proportion of robots that go into the automotive industry is more, compared to the other industry. Now, I would say it is balanced. 

Yeah, we used to always have skewed numbers going into the automotive industry, but that situation is a little bit coming back. So this is a very positive sign for all of us. So if at all, there is a little bit of hesitation to use these robots, I would say it is not on the technical side, but more on the cost benefit calculations. It is huge in terms of productivity, quality and reducing rework, so people should make the decision. 

Access to SMEs in terms of Robotisation or creating a smart manufacturing space John says, of course, cost and affordability is very important. Today, collaborative robots give that option. Today, if I look at the total cost of ownership of a solution of a collaborative robot, it is not as high as an industry. So that affordability part is taken care of. And again, this robot is a tool to get to where our ambition is; our ambition is to be a country with very good efficiency, productivity, then in these things we will have to invest. Yeah, of course, we are there to support in terms of the technical knowhow that we have. 

We need to support a lot of our SMEs in the technical space, which we are very much open to. And that is one of the reasons you know, we have come up with this concept of these robots that should not be something that is very difficult for people. We have to break that barrier. The adaptability means a little bit of familiarity. So, we may need to make people familiar with the technology. 

Anup added, the problem is when we transfer lines, if one is down, then the rest of the equipment is also down. I think we got to look at robots in two different ways. One is to look at robots very simply as an assistant, as an actuator. Today, we don’t even ask a question, why do you need a motor, you know, wherever there is motion, you have to have a motor. So I would request that the education of robots should be done in a way that we start with the very basics. 

And we say what kind of movements are possible. Any device which can give you that flexibility is deemed as a robot or as a cobot, that’s one at the basic level. The other is that robotic implementation is not limited by just the cost of the robot. You know, we invested in a robot, we paid 25 Lakhs, but we ended up paying about one and a half crores for the entire sale, which is six times and there was a huge learning curve. 

But what we were out to achieve. We have created a concept of a multipurpose robot. Now, we have created a robotic system, where you can do multiple operations using a single robot, but you need to put in certain grippers, you need to put in automated tool changes etc. And on the other side, we also built a sequential line. Now, in the sequential line, if my station number two is down, there is no point in station 1 3 5 6 being in production because it’s a sequential line. Whereas I can take over any function. And I could keep adding functions within a shorter footprint. 

What we have done is we have got a robot to hang from the ceiling. So it’s got a 360 degree free movement and along the 360 degrees, there are various assembly stations, test stations, stations where you can do screwdriving, stations where you could wrap up etc. So, the ability of large designers to use the free flowing capability of a robot or a cobot, I think, is going to be very important. So, manufacturing engineers or line designers will have to study this as a very potent tool. I would say, as we are talking about digital and digital twins, we will have to look at robots as a very powerful tool in the physical domain to get the full benefits of robotisation and automation. 

When we talk about smart factories, we already have traditional factories in place, probably conversion of existing factory space into a smart factory. 

Manufacturing practices vs. industrial Renaissance 

Ramakrishnan said, when we look at from the Indian domestic manufacturing sector perspective, a lot of Indian manufacturing companies are still family owned businesses, majority of them the first time entrepreneur itself. So they started their manufacturing journey a few years back, and during this process, they are also investing in conventional machines and everything. 

So, we try to give them a holistic view of the manufacturing that has to be like this, the first and foremost thing is normally people will be thinking, whether it will be work for me, will it work for me, like I’m ready to invest something, but will it go to get the return on investment, as has been emphasised in any of the investments. 

If we have to start this journey, then start doing a small ‘Proof of Concept’ (POC). Do the proof of concept in a very critical area, which can see the results immediately. So when they see the results, then the adoption as well as whatever the investments they are making is a right investment, they are doing it. And as solution providers like us, Omron and the ABB, we provide the missionaries the solutions to enable or to empower the manufacturing sector into smart manufacturing. 

But at the end of the day people need to believe, this is going to work for which a small POC or a small pilot will help them to adopt a particular journey at a much, much faster pace. So to ensure that we also provide some of those initial investments in these types of solutions is very capital intensive. But at the same time, we also can not neglect the small and medium sector. 

So we try to provide a business model, wherein they pay per user model. So, especially for the POCs, and pilots, we adopt this SAAS model to ensure whatever their required outputs are all achieved using this SAAS model for one year per use license, and which will give the confidence for the companies to start their journey a much further. 

So I am sure like most pandemics, this acceleration or the digital transformation is happening rapidly. Just to tell, in the peak of the pandemic, there are four customers who adopted this journey, they are not like bigger companies. So they started adopting this type of technology. They know that okay, if they want to improve their profitability and overall increase efficiency, smart manufacturing is the way to go. So that adoption is there in a sense, basically the conviction to put in the money. As a solution provider, we need to look at how we give that confidence and conviction. 

The way forward 

Bhavesh remarked, definitely this interactive session gave a lot of insight to us. And we believe that all the speakers could do justice to the forum and tried to share knowledge. 

We look forward to more and more opportunities to have a larger interaction. And, you know, a smart factory is a futuristic thing right for India, as we said or as everybody was saying this is going to be the buzzword of the next two decades for sure the smart factories, the smart automation or whatever terminology we used. So, all the suppliers, all the OEMs, all the customers’ consultants are all gaining insights . We are here to grasp this opportunity and technology has evolved.