Use Cases de Manufacturing – Part 3

Apresentação da Empresa

Company facts

• Manufacturer of high-end architectural stone products (e.g. stone fireplaces, fountains, floors, etc.
• Year founded: 2003
• HQ: Calverton, NY
• Revenues: $10 million
• Employees: 35

Use Case

Unifying a geographically dispersed production team into an IoT-enabled connected process

Situação e Solução

• The family-run business with clients worldwide wanted to accelerate and streamline the design and production process of its premium stone products, and invested in an IoT platform. Previously, the production process was prone to mechanical glitches, which, in order to get resolved, were depending on technicians’ availability.
• The new intelligent manufacturing environment links Lido, technicians at companies like Italy-based Breton which manufactures the stone-cutting machines Lido uses), as well as Lido’s architects all into a connected process.
• Both the client and Breton technicians, located thousands of miles away in Italy, can now monitor a job’s progress in real-time, detecting, and even fixing, problems as they may unfold.

Resultados

• The IoT-based solution has increased the company’s productivity by approximately 30%, largely by reducing machinery downtime.
• It boosted revenues by 70%, supported by a $ half-million savings in technician’s travel costs annually.
• Lido Stone was also able to increase its workforce by approximately 60%.

Apresentação da Empresa

Company facts

• Gloal auto parts manufacturer and supplier
• Year founded: 1932 HQ: Hiroshima, Japan
• Revenues: $1.6 billion
• Employees: 1,886

Use Case

Leveraging IoT to address unplanned downtime

Situação e Solução

Every year, Hirotec Group designs and builds approximately 8 million car doors and 1.8 million exhaust systems. It’s also operating in an industry where the auto manufacturers that buy these parts are accustomed to pitting suppliers against each other in order to keep prices low. As a result, just one hour of unplanned downtime could cost Hirotec as much as $1.3 million an hour.

Hirotec invested in an IoT platform paired with edge analytics to collect and analyze data from the factory floor, and support production systems monitoring. Because some of the data processing and real-time analytics involved occur out on the edge of the network, rather than in a centralized data center, exhaust system lines can now be automatically inspected.

Data sources for this pilot included inspection robots, force sensors, laser measurement devices, and cameras. The company now deploys the system to perform real-time visualization and automatic report generation for the entire production line of an automobile door production facility.

Resultados

• Through the pilots, Hirotec gained real-time visibility into its business operations, which allowed the company to address issues that impact its efficiency and throughput.
• The use of IoT technology also equipped Hirotec to utilize machine learning to predict and prevent failures in critical systems like its exhaust system inspection lines.
• Another positive outcome is the improved collaboration between Hirotec’s Operations and Information Technology (IT) departments. By working daily with R&D engineers, IT teams quickly gained access to corporate roadmaps and strategic goals.

Apresentação da Empresa

Company facts

• Lighting manufacturer
• Year founded: 1919
• HQ: Munich, Germany
• Revenues: €4.1 billion
• Employees: 26,000

Use Case

Connecting manufacturing operations via an app

Situação e Solução

In an effort to make manufacturing operations more productive, flexible and modular, the OSRAM’s plant for xenon automotive lamps in Berlin deployed the OSRAM Ticket Manager (OTM), an app on employees’ mobile devices which gives them their work assignments and keeps them up-to-date on the status of their machines.

This system takes what can be highly varied streams of machine data and then coordinates, harmonizes, and processes them into useful information – based on rules and in real-time.

Workers can simply consult an app for a status report on their machines and systems. It presents a clear overview of any upcoming tasks, such as maintenance work or resupplying materials, allowing them to be organized and assessed.

The digital tool connects the more than 80 machines at the plant, and given its success in Berlin, will be rolled out to other plants next.

Resultados

• First and foremost, the OSRAM Ticket Manager ensures that production runs on schedule, allowing for consistently fast troubleshooting.
• Plant workers carry out their tasks faster, more efficiently, and with greater precision.
• This lowered the cost of faults and errors in shop floor assets, as well as in non-optimized planning.
• At the same time, the new tool helped the company rethink structures and workflows in the Berlin plant, even raising the question whether instructions from the shift manager or from the Ticket Manager carry more weight.
• The use of the app has also resulted in workers coming up with new ideas of their own.

Apresentação da Empresa

Company facts

• Personal care company
• Year founded: 1909
• HQ: Clichy, France
• Revenues: €26 billion
• Employees: 89,300

Use Case

Leveraging 3D printing for more competitive custom design

Situação e Solução

To deal with the ever-increasing and quickly changing needs of its customer base, L’Oréal is fully embracing Industry 4.0 principles to make its shop floor agile, ergonomic, and customer-centric.

One of the company’s digitization efforts is the 4.0 Lab which deploys 3D printing technology for prototypes. Since 2017, L’Oréal has been using the technology for creating mock-ups or packaging models.

3D printing however is also used to produce spare parts as needed. When the manufacturer needed to introduce a new seal to one of its shampoos due to leaks, it 3D printed the seals, which resolved the issues within two weeks instead of 24 weeks.

To encourage employees to become better acquainted with 3D printing, L’Oréal encourages free use of the technology during specific times.

Other, as the company calls it, Operations 4.0 efforts on the shop floor include the use of collaborative robots for end-of-line operation, connected devices, augmented and virtual reality for training, and digital twins.

Resultados

• 100% of new product packaging now involves 3D printing
• The deployment of the technology has led to:
  • Reduced cost;
  • Improved lead times (24 hours is the times it takes for fast prototyping); and
  • Overall quicker innovation and co-development of new products among the group’s brands