Smart Manufacturing Solutions for Shop Floor Challenges

Manufacturing employs a diversified set of people who have orthogonal capabilities and diversified perspectives towards the functions. We cannot ignore these scenarios at the shop floor as it needs such capabilities for mass production and quality outcomes. These diversified scenarios highly affect the operation as the tracking of the overall production and the quality at a single place is a bigger challenge. With the manufacturing 4.0 revolution, the innovation happening today is a game-changer for the manufacturing industry.

Smart manufacturing solution can ease some of the challenges faced by the Production managers at the shop floors by using the digital transformation technologies of the Industry 4.0. Some of the key challenges faced today due to the silo of the data storage and the paper based tracking are letting these manufactures down with half baked and fudged data. It is very important to understand these problems and how we can make the manufacturing solutions resolve them.

What is Smart Manufacturing?

Smart manufacturing (a.k.a Manufacturing 4.0) is an advanced manufacturing approach that leverages digital technologies and automation to optimize production, boost efficiency, and enhance decision-making. It combines interconnected devices, data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to create a responsive, data-driven production environment.

Key features include real-time data collection and analysis, automation and robotics, digital twin technology, supply chain integration, and enhanced quality control. Smart manufacturing transforms traditional factories into connected, intelligent ecosystems as part of the Industry 4.0 revolution. Adaptable across sectors such as automotive, electronics, and pharmaceuticals, it ultimately drives productivity, cost savings, and competitiveness in a digital-first marketplace.

Key Manufacturing Challenges Today

There are a lot of challenges for each factory based on the customized way in which they run the process. There cannot be one specific manufacturing 4.0 solution for all these cases. However, there are a few scenarios that are prevalent to all these factories and as well can be extended based on their need. This article takes a deep dive into the challenges and the smart manufacturing solutions that can help them.

Poor Inventory Management

Be it any manufacturing industry, handling & managing WIP inventory is immensely critical for industrial growth. Improper Material management leads to various production problems. Inventory management forms the foundation of the supply chain. It involves supervising and inspecting purchases from suppliers and customers. It entails managing & safeguarding stock storage & controlling the available product quantity for sale. Lastly, it encompasses fulfilling orders. Managing inventory effectively is crucial, regardless of its location—whether it's in a warehouse, multiple sites, or consigned and drop-shipped from suppliers. Improved inventory management directly impacts cash flow positively and reduces expenses significantly. Understanding the recurring challenges in inventory management has become crucial. Industry leaders are actively seeking solutions to address these issues & enhance customer satisfaction.

Several typical challenges encountered by the manufacturing industry regarding inventory management include :

• Inaptly located material – This will eat up a great deal of time and manpower, and it is tough to identify a product among stocked.
• Out-of-date material – Failing to recognize and utilize obsolete materials will lead to an increase in expenses and waste of the material.
• Excessive stock – Poor stock control & management by the managers.
• Stock Theft – Shortage or theft of inventory material leads to production downtime or delay.

Communication Barriers due to Data Inconsistency

Manufacturers rely on global suppliers for their need of raw materials to complete the manufacturing of their products successfully. Counting further parties such as contractors, vendors, or other parties, to their supply chain will substantially shoot up the prospects of miscommunication & blunder. Managing various parts of a product happens across different global locations. The production itself extends to multiple locations, either nationally or internationally. The thing is manufacturers must make sure that their supply chain is functioning properly.

The stumbling block is that the diverse manufacturing teams that may be operating throughout the territory or the globe don’t recognize where they are in the process. Manually maintaining the data and records will not be the apt solution. This is because they may miss out on things & also it will be more time-consuming. Lacking an effective means of communication hinders teams from understanding real-time production updates. This lack of clarity makes it impossible for all teams to react to changes in the production schedule promptly.

Risk of poor product quality Tracking

The level of quality control in manufacturing can vary significantly based on the type of product and the industry requirements. The top-quality outcome generates unwavering customer loyalty. It drives a requisite & crucial contribution to ROI and profitability. Keeping an eye on the equipment/products around the clock is immensely paramount to carrying on a healthy inventory. The faults or imperfections in products will fail to meet customer expectations. This can harm a business's reputation. Hence, finding defective material at the start of the process is essential for fixing the production problems or replacing it with another. Today, manufacturing industries perform this task manually every day, and this consumes a lot of time. Hence, the precision real-time data on bad quantities in the production line only will help in avoiding the production of rejects.

Unplanned Machine Maintenance & Downtime

Managing manufacturing uptime poses a major challenge for all production managers. Machine downtime is influenced by the material availability for the particular machine/process, machine health, and operator efficiency. As per the research, more than 82% of the companies are facing unplanned downtime over a three-year period and averages to 800 Hour per year. According to Aberdeen Research, companies loose up to $260,000 per hour due to Machine downtime. However, most manufacturers lack focus on understanding the true cost of machine downtime. This oversight contributes to industry-wide costs remaining in the billions of dollars. Not tracking your repaired equipment can lead to significant losses. For instance, if a crucial part of your manufacturing equipment breaks down or fails at a key moment in the production process, you will lose substantial costs with an extensive impact on your industry’s bottom line.

Improper Planning & Execution

A minor alteration in the shop floor's production line and the plan can impact production performance. It can lead to downgraded overall performance. Dynamics in the customer priorities, short production items, too many change overs (that were not planned), defective raw materials are the key issues that will bring down the shop floor performance.

One of the key metrics production managers miss to notice is the Overall Equipment effectiveness, which can give a clear picture of how the machines are utilized, how the operations are performed, and the quality of the parts produced. Fudging of the data is one of the most dreadful things on the shop floor to cook up these metrics. Shop floor supervisors and managers does not understand the base in which the particular process OEE Calculation needs to be done. Without proper understanding, the theoretical and the actual values are not the same, leading to unknown production loss.

Mitigate Challenges with Smart Manufacturing 4.0

The goal of any Shop floor facility is to improve manufacturing productivity and increase business profitability. A comprehensive suite of highly integrated Smart manufacturing solutions will be the right model that encompasses the complete digital transformation need of the shop floor Instead of implementing multiple solutions. The integrated Manufacturing execution system not only saves costs and time, it also provides an integrated data and applications to enhance collaboration.

The All in One Smart Factory solution offers manufacturers a baseline of mandatory tools needed for the complete control over their production line from your desk. Our solution streamlines every facet of the production process, guaranteeing operational efficiency and heightened productivity. Based on your production process, the software can be extended as needed. Let's explore how our smart factory solutions can effectively resolve the previously mentioned issues.

1. Improving Inventory Management

WIP Inventory Manager is a composite tool for Small and medium businesses who look for more affordable solutions. The stand-alone can be configured based on your own process, parts, rejection, and scrap work flow. This solution is very much apt for a one-piece flow operation. Manufacturing execution system comes with an integrated Inventory management from store to delivery that helps automatic and manual tracking of the WIP. The MES System is very much configurable and flexible to have:

• Independent Raw Material vs Part mapping
• Individual part based process flow
• Automated material movement based on the data acquired from the machines.
• Manual movement of the material.
• Store and Finished Goods Management.

As an inventory tracking system, our solution enables manufacturers to manage inventories effectively, thereby boosting overall efficiency and performance in manufacturing operations. With precise inventory monitoring, manufacturers attain enhanced visibility into material movements throughout the production floor, enabling efficient management of work-in-progress inventory flow and averting overstocking or shortages at any production stage.

2. Accessing Real-time Production Data

With the advent of Industry 4.0, the gap between the DCS and the MES has been bridged and now the direct acquisition of the data is happening through a seamless merger of the data across multiple machines on the shop floor. Communication today is being enabled with real-time and accurate data. The Digital Twin, by presenting consistent data to all stakeholders on the shop floor, ensures everyone is on the same page, fostering transparency, streamlined communication, and faster decision-making. From raw material availability and forecasting to finished goods, they possess the capability to monitor every aspect, facilitating streamlined manufacturing operations.

3. Enhanced Quality Management

The digital transformation and Industry 4.0 brings in a composite set of capabilities to acquire, analyze and present data as needed. The Quality is pivotal for the overall productivity. For every product becoming defective, we lose the sales cost. Smart manufacturing solutions acquires

• Quality Rejections directly from the machines
• Quality specifications from the Visual inspection process
• Process parameters like Speed, pressure, temperature, RPM against time.

The complete quality profiling and back tracking of the quality based on the production parameters for future analysis is guaranteed as these data can be latched on to the part, the particular batch of production, or even to the single product based on the product and the severity of the part and the process. These data help manufacturers and OEMs make decisions for their Recall and other deeper root cause analysis to help their future process alignment.

4. Enhancing Machine Uptime

Having productive machine time is the first step towards creating shippable products. Planning & department heads and Maintenance play a major role in the enhancing the machine uptime. Shop floor planning is not just giving schedules for production, but running a proper execution. Execution includes proper maintenance of the machines, ensuring proper availability of the raw materials for each process (ensuring working Inventory), motivated operators and proper & timely communication. These measures will ensure the elimination of the machine downtime. Automated data acquisition from the machines for the productive time and bringing the maintenance team for the downtime with automated and user initiated ticketing system for maintenance is enabled by the machine maintenance system, offered as a stand-alone and integrated software in the MES Software. This manufacturing solution empowers manufacturers to identify reasons for downtime preemptively. Operators can promptly report any machine issues, including malfunctions or performance declines, providing detailed maintenance descriptions and specifying the involved machines.

Moreover, manufacturers can schedule and execute routine maintenance tasks on production machines to maintain optimal functionality. The interpretation of this machine downtime data as MTTR & MTBF to analyze machine performance and its life time. These metrics help the Department head keep the necessary allowance for the planning.

5. Improving Overall Shop floor Performance

Any manufacturing operation starts with the Manufacturing resource planning and ends with the shipment of the parts to the customer. An effective running of the manufacturing is how best you manage your overall Operational expense (OPEX) of the execution. To run the shop floor effectively, digitally enhance your shop floor with:

• MRP - Analyzing the material requirements based on what is inside your factory from Store to Finished goods and place the order to vendor with the right expected time of delivery and payment schedule.
• Planning & Execution - Proper planning based on the Machining Cycle time for each process and part combination with the clear set up time and allowance for changeover will create the right execution. Access the planning using the Machine Twin AI to calculate achieve ability.
• Production Management - Complete Shop floor data acquisition for production count, quality (automated and manual) to understand the actual happenings at the shop floor.
• Capacity Utilization - Accessing the overall usage of the capacity of the machines for batch and individual material flow will help plan for the future and estimate the current outcome.
• Traceability - Complete end to end traceability using individual barcodes or for batches helps deliver high quality products with the right data.

In addition the complete need of WIP Inventory Management, Maintenance management, Operator performance enhancement, complete reporting of all the KPIs including the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) will help analyze the complete end to end operation of the shop floor. The digital transformation helps run the operation sitting remotely.

Manufacturing enterprises run complex manufacturing operations, which needs more customized software and hardware that runs in sync with their operations. The extendable Smart Manufacturing execution system can be customized and run based on their operation. For the convenience of the MSMEs and making it more affordable, the Smart factory is available as a cloud manufacturing solution with all the essential functionalities for the enhanced manufacturing productivity.