How IIoT and big data create value from a zero-defect production perspective
The entry of the internet and digital into the industrial sector is radically transforming production systems and operations, especially in the manufacturing world, which is evolving under the influence of Industry 4.0 scenarios. Italian manufacturing is not exempt from these dynamics, characterized by a slower start due to the conformation of the industrial fabric and a gap in technological skills, combined with the need for a change that is also cultural.
We speak of a factory that becomes “intelligent” reality, networked, integrated, automated, sustainable, reconfigurable, flexible in cycles and processes. The key principle of the current trend and the basis for the growth of competitiveness of companies is the search for efficiency, while the objectives are multiple: increase in throughput, quality and useful life of finished products, reduction in consumption, etc. The push towards zero-defect manufacturing is significant, a paradigm that aims to reduce rework and waste deriving from inefficient processes as much as possible, and that aspires to the development of integrated maintenance and quality control tools that take advantage of process and system knowledge.
The evolution towards the Smart Factory appears to be linked to the introduction of new digital technologies that permeate all areas of the value chain and that enable real-time interconnection between company resources in a vision that sees products, resources and people “Connected”, even with the outside world (suppliers, partners, etc.).
There are two technological areas that characterize the center of gravity of the 4.0 factory: theInformation Technology (IT) and theOperational Technology (OT), whose combination is a source of opportunities. At the IT level, emphasis is placed on the Industrial Internet of Things, a term indicating sensors and devices equipped with
integrated operating systems and wireless connectivity, which collect data in various forms and generate
added value for the end user by processing the information content in order to extrapolate from the
data what can be interesting. IIoT is usually proposed together with big data management tools, which aim to make large amounts of data on the cloud both real-time and ex-post persistent, manipulable and accessible for historical analysis. Holonix promotes this innovation through its flagship product-service i-Live Machines, cloud platform designed for industrial machinery manufacturers, specialized for collection and analysis remotely of the data of a fleet of machines, and aimed at the intelligent management of the same with a view to prognostics (preventive maintenance actions, prediction
failures, etc.). i-Live Machines is the result of Holonix’s decades of experience and improvements
incremental, transposition of the research activities carried out. The results of the european project
IQONIC (G.A. 820677 | http://www.iqonic-h2020.eu/), are significant. In this project, Holonix has to develop
new platform functions aimed at monitoring the conditions / performance of optoelectronic systems and diagnostics for process reconfiguration in a zerodefect perspective.
Innovation 4.0 is therefore eroding residual barriers in manufacturing, which is fertile ground for development and investments.