December 16, 2015 Industry Forum Blog Will deploying digital technologies boost your productivity, QCD performance and global competitiveness? This is the message we get from all the promotional information. But as with any new system or equipment, we need to evaluate the pros and cons before rushing in to purchase. To really improve performance and bottom line we need to ensure we are eliminating real waste, not just speeding up tasks classified as waste or non value adding (nva). Let’s have a look at a few examples. Smart tools and wearable tech Imagine using a smart torque wrench liaising with a variety of smart products during assembly. It tightens to the correct setting with a high level of accuracy, sends data to be captured for compliance on your safety critical item and then reconfigures the setting instantly for the next product. Bad quality through user error is eliminated, and time to collate compliance data is vastly reduced. Key here is that if the tightening is a value added task and regulation states you must have compliance data, then you have almost certainly eliminated some waste. Now consider the scenario where warehouse workers are using wearable tech to assist picking and stock taking. Using multiple hands free devices will speed up the operation and reduce errors (bad quality) and operator motion. But we must question the need for the warehouse in the first place. Are we overproducing? Eliminate waste in the value stream before investing in tech. Virtual and Augmented Reality Using VR and AR instead of manual design systems and paper based Standard Operating Procedures reduces waste (see last blog) and speeds up the whole design process. But they are not a cure-all. There are other important actions you should take to speed up time to market. Using in sight displays of near live data analysis may reduce operational wastes. But don’t loose the value of gathering a team together to problem solve and eliminate root causes. Linked systems Seamless digital manufacturing systems, that replace manual processes, can speed up feedback and reporting by eliminating the wastes of using the old system. Like time spent retrieving information and transferring to different systems, errors and waiting for others to finish tasks. But again don’t automate wasteful or nva tasks, review the information flow first. Electronic storage space and bandwidth do cost money and can be wasted! Big data and other analytics Using cloud and IoT technologies can boost the power of Condition Based Maintenance and CMMS systems to predict machine failures before they occur. This reduces downtime and production costs but comes at a price. I recommend that you evaluate what you need from your CMMS system first and consider scaling it up over time. Cloud based speech analytics are being used to improve customer services; resolving issues more quickly and preventing future costs. I’ll let you decide for yourself if this is speeding up a reactive approach or is it being proactive? Summary A key message from the Advanced Engineering show was that we need to use lean techniques as well as emerging technologies to improve performance and productivity. Robots and machines can not do problem solving and improvement activities like humans can – yet! We need to be aware of what technology can do and deploy what we need, to drive out real waste and solve problems. I hope you enjoyed this series of blogs on emerging technologies and how they will shape our future. I would love to hear about your thoughts and experiences.
