The industry is facing a lot of problems: Customers want new, unique, high-quality, and still affordable products in shorter and shorter amounts of time.
These skills aren’t just nice to have anymore, they’re important for your business. In today’s manufacturing industry, where efficiency is very important and downtime can quickly hurt the bottom line, smart technologies are a must.
If manufacturers want to change and get back on their feet after 18 months of turbulence, they need to embrace digital transformation, digital solutions, and predictive maintenance, as well as other things that help them do that. It doesn’t matter if it’s AI, Augmented Reality (AR), or the Internet of Things (IoT): They all play an important role in keeping equipment running smoothly, identifying problems early, and solving problems quickly no matter where you are. When it comes to manufacturing, the future is going to be digital, so it’s time to move forward.
With IoT and AI, you can do things before they happen
In their day-to-day work, manufacturing sites collect data that gives a complete picture of their condition, for example, based on vibration patterns, temperature changes, or noise levels.
Predictive maintenance can be done by collecting this data through an IoT network and then analyzing it. In this way, manufacturers can find problems before they cause any damage or problems with the machines. Often, small problems that can be easily fixed can grow into bigger problems, which can even stop the manufacturing line.
However, because there is a lot of data that needs to be analyzed, AI is very important to getting useful and actionable information. AI will look at and compare the normal state of a machine and the best values for all parameters. Machine sensors that detect changes, like a sudden rise in temperature, alert the system. This is how it works:
Predictive maintenance is being used
One example is when a temperature rise is detected at a machine. The system checks to see if it goes back to normal in a certain amount of time, and if it does, the incident is recorded. There is a first step in escalation if there is no change in the temperature. An employee will get a message from the IoT system about the incident.
When predictive maintenance is working well as a maintenance strategy, machines only need to be repaired when they need to be repaired, not when they don’t. That’s when things are most likely to go wrong.
People will need new human-machine interfaces to be able to work well in the smart factory of the future, so they can do their jobs. Smart phones and tablets. These mobile devices have a lot of sensors and connect to each other wirelessly. There are many ways to use the Coaster®, which is about the size of a drink coaster but can help with logistics. The device not only has a camera and a screen, but it can also communicate with other machines through different types of interfaces.
Wearables and AR can help you keep your home in good shape
There are usually only a few simple things you can do yourself to avoid big problems, like refilling coolant or changing moving parts. Step-by-step maintenance procedures, or workflows, are shown to service technicians on a wearable device, like smart glasses, through AR. These workflows show service technicians how to do each step. A technician is working on a piece of equipment and the AR elements are shown in their field of vision. This way, the technician can see the steps in front of them but can still use both hands to do the maintenance tasks. All hand actions can be recorded by a built-in camera in the goggles so that quality and auditability can be checked.
AR can also help if an outside expert is needed to fix a problem, and this is a good thing. It helps if you have smart glasses or a smartphone with an AR app on it. Technicians on the ground and an expert at a distance can see the same thing together. Through the camera on the end device, both people see the same picture. Instead of giving verbal directions, as you would in a phone call, there are visual markers that can help people stay where they are.
The future of making things
Yes. The digital transformation of manufacturing will open up a lot of great opportunities for the EU.
It’s important for the manufacturing industry to keep up with changes in the world. In order to keep modern production lines running smoothly, AI, AR and IoT must be used to predict problems and fix them before they hurt the supply chain. It’s impossible for businesses to waste time with manufacturing problems or let small defects turn into a shutdown of a production line.
