Page 34 - MetalForming May 2019

Fabrication: IoT
• Make real-time monitoring a must—81 percent of survey takers say that real-time monitoring is improving their busi- ness; 83 percent consider real-time monitoring “essential.”
• One of the prerequisites to growing at a rate of 10 per- cent or more is attaining a real-time, 360-deg. view of the shop floor and each manufacturing process. Having real- time data available enables fast-growing manufacturers to better see how they can improve inventory management, driving greater financial management accuracy across accounts payable and accounts receivable.
Another conference speaker, Rose of Sharon DeVos, founder and CEO of IIoT Automating Solutions, brings home many of Columbus’ points with a presentation discussing IoT on the plant floor, and how to gain the all- important operator buy-in.
“IoT quickly can become a pro- duction supervisor's best friend,” DeVos says, “once you've gained the complete support of the machine operators on the plant floor. This pres-
entation will focus on the culture change required, and explain how to convince operators that collecting and ana- lyzing machine data will simplify their jobs.”
IoT from A to Z
This year’s conference-speaker lineup has IoT covered from every angle—specifically for small to midsized manu- facturers. For instance, keynote presenter Bill Frahm, pres- ident of 4M Partners LLC, will explain how IoT serves as a framework for an information network strategy for metal- forming-plant operations, maintenance and logistics.
“IIoT—a defined relationship between machines, infor- mation technologies and people—represents a set of deployed technologies and interfaces that allow metalform- ers,” Frahm says, “to capture detailed and actionable infor- mation about their operations and equipment status. It can trigger alarms announcing undesirable conditions, and notify employees about maintenance requirements.”
Another keynote presentation, this
from consultant Ed Potoczak of the
Oakstone Group, will provide seven
real use cases of metal formers who
sought to connect their press-line
equipment to automatically monitor
and control their processes, enabling
plant management to overcome chal-
lenges such as mixed generations of
equipment, faults, bottlenecks and
variations. Most importantly,
Potoczak will cover the economic benefits that resulted.
The human element of IoT can’t be ignored, and we’ve got that covered from two angles. First, award-winning speaker and best-selling author Lisa Ryan connects IoT with
workforce development in a presentation titled, Not Your Grandfather's Factory: Modernizing Manufacturing to Attract Millennials. Lisa asks:
“How do you make manufacturing jobs more attractive and appealing to prospective employees? You can start by modernizing your brand. If your company is stuck in an old, calcified way of doing business, you’re going to have a hard time finding and keeping younger workers. Today’s workers are digital natives, ‘wired’ for technology, and they expect to access it in the workplace. That’s why it’s critical for manufacturers to not only have cutting-edge Industry 4.0 technology available, but to also promote the technology used in their production process.”
Following that theme, a presentation from Systems X Corp. president, Rubens Perfomo, will alert attendees to apps running on mobile devices designed to allow plant floor workers to remain fully engaged with their fellow work- ers and with management. These apps, which run inside of an IoT platform, allow workers to view real-time work instruc- tions, call for help when needed, and reach out to a team of employees for input and support as needed.
Sensors and Controls at the Heart of it All
Getting down to the technology available to bring IoT initiatives into our facilities, Helge
Hornis, technology director at sensor
manufacturer Pepperl+Fuchs, will
explain the benefits of flat IP networks that allow automation components to interface directly via a communi- cation layer. “In such models,” he says, “data are available and ready to be used by any process that benefits from the information.”
While the cell-control approach is
expected to dominate metal forming applications for years to come, the demand for higher output and decreased setup times promises to become ever more important. “Over time,” Hornis adds, “metal forming operations will need to embrace lot-size-of-one manufacturing techniques based on advanced mathematical modeling and digital twins.”
Low-Hanging Fruit: Predictive Analytics
Other speakers in the lineup include:
• Bryan Sapot, CEO and founder of SensrTrx, who seeks to dispel some of the myths of OEE and cut through confusing marketing speak, outlining how manufacturers can avoid mil- lion-dollar IoT analytics pilots and start tracking production KPIs with very little effort. He’ll explain why tracking machine downtime and downtime reasons are the most important data points from the plant
Rose of Sharon DeVos
Helge Hornis
Ed Potoczak
Bryan Sapot
32 MetalForming/May 2019
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