Mechanical Technology August 2016

⎪ Local manufacturing and beneficiation ⎪

This article by David Stain, senior vertical marketing manager for manufacturing and retail at Zebra Technologies, the US-based enterprise asset intelligence specialist, talks about modern trends in manufacturing and the solutions that allow plant operators to see what is happening in the enterprise in real time, helping them to make smarter and faster decisions. Track and trace for manufacturing efficiency

I spend a lot of time on our customers’ manufacturing lines – from those run by OEMs through to their tier one and tier two partners and on to component suppliers. Despite differences between these companies, the managers who run their production lines talk of common issues: competition is sharper than ever; costs are under pressure; com- pliance and legislation are onerous; raw material prices are generally on the up; and there’s a drive to accelerate produc- tion. Then there’s the consumer: people’s changing expectations have seen the gulf separating mass production to made-to- order customisation narrowing fast. Personalisation is now a key trend: first in food (customised M&M ® s any-

one?) and now with consumer goods, people want things made for them. Take the Vauxhall Adam – it has over a million variants, the Citroën DS3 offers three million combinations and the 2015 Dodge Viper and Viper SRT really can be ‘one-of-a-kind’ cars with a stagger- ing 25-million possible configurations. Indeed, if building things wasn’t already complex it’s becoming more so. The ‘more’ era How do I sum up these challenges? In a word: ‘more’. I see the need to produce more, more quickly, to achieve more cost and time savings, to find ways to manage more compliance, and, ultimately to be more efficient.

Stages and gates situated throughout a manufacturing plant provide a continuous stream of performance data and therefore, visibility over the progress of the line. Just as we need to find new ways to work more effectively, the Internet of Things (IoT) promises to achieve it. IoT describes an environment where barcodes and smart sensors connected

Issues such as booking-in taking too much time, looking for a missing pallet and relying on paper instructions to guide put-away can be overcome by using RFID readers and instructions can be sent to mobile computers to help people efficiently put away stock.

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Mechanical Technology — August 2016