Smart factories are not simple and intelligent, and the smart factories that are often referred to today are just part of “smart manufacturing”. Under smart manufacturing, the traditional manufacturing process will be restructured with the aim of achieving product intelligence. Among them, personalized customer needs and design, information access and sharing between suppliers and manufacturers, rapid response to after-sales service and other links with the intelligent factory, become a key component of intelligent manufacturing.
01 Changes in the manufacturing supply chain
The demand in the consumer market is changing so fast that it is a challenge for traditional manufacturing.
Customer real-time expectations are rising, supply chains are becoming more and more complex, through human analysis or backward tools to manage the control of the manufacturing process, has been difficult to meet the current market demand. Smart factories capture large amounts of real-time data from smart sensors and the Internet of Things, based on analytics from cloud-based high-computing servers, and create more flexible production processes to keep up with customer demand.
The smart manufacturing model is completely different from traditional manufacturing, relying on advanced digital manufacturing technology, factories can produce on demand, source raw materials from suppliers around the world, avoid the risk of large inventory, and manage customer feedback through social media to achieve faster, more flexible and more efficient product
delivery. Using an optimized supply chain can not only reduce delivery time and cost, but also reduce the number of defective products in the production process based on market information.
02 Product quality consistency
In the past manufacturing industry, when the factory received shop floor information or from customer survey data, the product has entered the customer group, that is, the damage has been produced, leaving the user with a low quality impression.
And the new manufacturing model, with the help of IoT technology, allows factory enterprises to collect real-time transfer data, gain timely insight into the problem and make changes before the product causes serious problems.
Placing smart sensors for the product will ensure a consistent quality level for each product, whether it is consumer electronics, household appliances or industrial equipment, where sensors report abnormal data to manufacturers and then the factory provides more punctual after-sales
service. In addition, the factory can analyze the product deficiencies from the data, optimize the next product, and ultimately ensure that the quality of the product is more stable.
03 Critical Value of Predictive Maintenance
Accidents and unplanned maintenance of factory production lines will cost the business a lot, and every piece of equipment and machine spent without problems, but downtime is not only a blow to the company’s production losses, but also a drag on productivity.
In today’s increasingly expensive, this kind of unplanned downtime may take a long time to check repairs, and to pay huge sums of money, for small and medium-sized enterprises can not afford.
In The Industry 4.0 model, there is a predictive maintenance method that automatically monitors machine wear in real time by placing sensors on production equipment in a smart factory.
The machine can then be used by algorithms to accurately track the replacement time of parts and machines.
Predictive maintenance helps schedule replacement of equipment parts before errors occur, and can reasonably schedule replacement times, such as during idle periods of the machine, without taking up production time. This not only ensures the efficiency of the production line, but also improves the overall agility of the plant.
Smart manufacturing has become an important trend in global manufacturing.
Smart factories will ensure that manufacturing service capabilities are taken to a whole new level.