How is that the Automotive trade Handling the New Industrial Revolution?

Bill Gates is presupposed to have once quipped that "If gram had well-kept with technology just like the industry has, we might all be driving $25 cars that got one,000 MPG." albeit the genuineness of this quote is questionable, it's been circulated throughout the web for years as a result of there's one thing regarding the sentiment that rings faithful U.S.. It actually doesn't appear that the automotive trade has well-kept with advancing technology the manner that the pc trade has.

This may result partly to the producing infrastructure that has evolved over the years. creating sweeping upgrades to instrumentality and/or processes appears a really pricey and risky proposition. When you couple this with the very fact that several automobile makers nowadays struggle to seek out enough demand for his or her current provide, it's straightforward to grasp why maintaining with the most recent technology is not a prime priority.

The problem with this reluctance, though, is that cars aren't cheap consumables that individuals purchase nonchalantly. Customers expect vehicles to come back with the best standards of safety and potency. Customers expect the most recent technology doable. however will makers carry on with this demand for innovation while not dynamic  their processes?

It appears that some makers area unit commencing to embrace the ways in which of the trendy industrial world, and area unit finding ways in which to align their business models with this wave of interconnectivity and efficient automation.

Honda producing of Alabama

Honda's largest lightweight truck production facility within the world - a three.7 million square measure plant - was Janus-faced with a drag only too common to massive producing facilities. Over the years, variety of various automation systems were introduced to assist contour production. With operations as well as blanking, stamping, welding, painting, injection molding, and plenty of alternative processes concerned in manufacturing up to 360,000 vehicles and engines annually, it's not stunning that they found themselves troubled to integrate PLCs from multiple makers, multiple MES systems, analytic systems, and database software from different vendors.

Of course, on top of these legacy systems, Honda continued to layer an array of smart devices on the plant floor and embed IT devices in plant equipment. The complexity introduced by this array of automation systems turned out to be slowing down the operations they were intended to streamline.

After reorganizing their business structure to merge IT and plant floor operations into a single department, Honda proceeded to deploy a new automation software platform that enabled them to bring together PLC data with the data coming from MES and ERP systems into a common interface that allowed the entire enterprise to be managed through a single system. This also allowed Honda to manage and analyze much larger data sets that revealed new opportunities for further optimization. While this reorganization required a significant investment of resources, they were able realize benefits immediately, and ultimately positioned themselves to maintain a competitive edge through the next decade or more.

Ford Motor Co.

Ford Motor Company operates a global network of manufacturing operations, and have had difficulty when trying to promote collaboration and share best practices between their various plants. They found a solution using technology based on the Google Earth infrastructure.

Ford was able to develop a cloud-based application that stores 2D and 3D representations of Ford's global manufacturing facilities, and allows users to navigate through these virtual environments, place pins, and upload video, images and documents to these pins that are shared throughout Ford's global operations. Engineers and operators can share information about current plant conditions and procedures, which can be accessed in real time from anywhere in the world. The accumulated data can be used for training or to update standard procedures. By creating a global collaborative tool, Ford has created a means of ensuring that each and every one of their employees has the latest, most accurate information on how to best perform a particular task or how to avoid a problem that was encountered elsewhere.

We will have to see in coming years whether or not these innovations will lead to improved market performance for either of these manufacturers, but in the meantime it is probably safe to expect other companies to follow suit. With the advances in manufacturing technologies and machine-to-machine communication, it is becoming very difficult to remain competitive without playing by the same rules as everyone else. Industrial technology has advanced to the point that we are experiencing what people refer to as a new industrial era - or Industry 4.0. Reluctance is no longer a viable option.

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