Manufacturing digitalisation is fundamental for businesses to thrive in demanding markets and where competition is fierce. With so many innovative technologies to choose from, driving this transformation in a sustainable way is crucial. It must match the needs and challenges of the business by maximising return on investment and delivering productivity benefits.
John Browett, General Manager of CLPA Europe, looks at the benefits of digital transformation and starting on a successful journey.
Manufacturing digitalisation is a progressive approach based on an understanding of the processes, operations, and conditions driving business efficiencies. Increased productivity, responsiveness and flexibility are some of the opportunities available to companies embracing this change.
The insight at the core of digitalised frameworks comes from gathering key data and turning it into knowledge. It supports real-time decision-making as well as smart, automated control and operations based on accurate predictive models.
Assessing this comes by connecting the business systems and processes and using the data to build a picture of the business. It provides a complete view using insights from information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT).
Manufacturing digitalisation
While technologies are important to support the digital transformation of businesses, it is about more than connecting more automation equipment. A successful digitalisation strategy involves a rethinking of industrial activities and business models to improve the processes.
Technology and innovations are the means to achieve this goal. What is important is selecting and investing in the ones that best address the specific goals of an intended application. It is not necessary to replace or upgrade existing equipment at once to become digital. Instead, the recommendation is to proceed in stages, controlling expenditure and ensuring support for legacy devices. It is then possible to develop and adapt processes and frameworks over time.
Embarking on a successful journey
To realise the benefits of digitalisation, companies should develop a custom plan divided into small projects. They should start by addressing their most immediate shortcomings, challenges or bottlenecks then move on to the next issues. Using a bottom-up approach delivers stronger ROIs and enhances competitiveness.
For example, start by automating a particularly repetitive task to help gather key data for monitoring purposes. Once complete, it is then possible to use the insights generated to reshape the activity and innovate it further. This leveraging provides new in-depth understanding to set up automated control systems.
Time sensitive networking
When selecting suitable projects and technologies, it helps to select an action that can exchange data with associated activities. Using an open industrial Ethernet network that supports Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) is a key initiator. It offers the connectivity necessary to converge the IT and OT domains while ensuring deterministic, reliable communications.
The solution must help the business select and analyse appropriate data and provide information in an understandable and helpful format. This means incorporating information modelling within industrial communications frameworks.
Currently, only the CC-Link IE TSN network can offer this level of functionality with its open industrial Ethernet offering TSN functions. It supports information modelling via CSP+ for Machine device profile technology. This provides XML format files that describe devices and pieces of equipment as well as the information they generate.
Joining the growing number of TSN adopters, businesses can enjoy an effective communication backbone for manufacturing digitalisation strategies. As a result, they can build a futureproof competitive edge for the years to come.
