Industry 4.0 in Action
A company shares their experience with Industry 4.0 – including the types of digital technologies implemented and the benefits being seen
Balajikasiram Sundararajan | | 6 min read | Technology
Credit: ACG World
ACG’s capsule manufacturing facility in Pithampur was recently accepted into the Global Lighthouse Network (GLN). The GLN is a community of progressive manufacturers who show leadership in adopting fourth industrial revolution technologies to transform factories, value chains and business models for compelling financial and operational returns. It is a World Economic Forum (WEF) initiative co-founded with McKinsey & Company and counselled by an advisory board of industry leaders, including Contemporary Amperex Technology, Foxconn Industrial Internet, Henkel, Johnson & Johnson, Koç Holdings, Schneider Electric, and Siemens. Factories and value chains that join the network are designated by an independent panel of experts. For more information about The Global Lighthouse Network, please visit: here.
Use cases and Impact
Industry 4.0 initiatives at the Pithampur manufacturing plant were designed to enable production of superior quality products, improve responsiveness and agility, boost production yield, reduce the cost of manufacturing, and enhance plant safety and sustainability. Within the facility Accordingly, multiple cross-functional Industry 4.0 use cases were developed and deployed, including:
- Dynamic production planning optimization with digital twin and discrete event simulation
- Golden batch for right-first-time production powered by Industrial Internet of things (IIoT) and an ensemble of machine learning models.
- Real-time batch insights using quality and agility with IIoT, computer vision, machine learning, and industrial robotics.
- Smart material transfer with autonomous guided vehicles.
- Energy consumption monitoring and optimization powered by IIoT and machine learning.
- Workforce augmentation and skills management, enabled by a skill management platform, generative AI, and virtual reality.
- Journey towards zero workplace accidents powered by a digital health & safety platform, virtual reality based safety training, and deep learning-based active safety management.
- Digital maintenance management: condition-based maintenance, predictive maintenance, generative AI (Gen AI) - based maintenance assistance, and mixed reality-based remote assistance
Application of Gen AI in the manufacturing shop floor was one of the novel use cases. Gen-AI is a type of artificial intelligence that creates text, videos, images, code, and synthetic data based on large pre-trained models. Midjourney, Llama, Dall-E and Chat GPT are well known examples. We have used large language models (LLMs) on proprietary data to generate insightful responses that help solve problems. We have trained our LLM-based intelligent operator assistant “ACG Nemo” on standard operating procedures (SOPs), maintenance SOPs, maintenance case sheets, and quality SOPs. ACG Nemo can provide meaningful answers to queries that help in problem solving on the shop floor. For instance, a maintenance engineer can ask a specific query about a specific machine failure and ACG Nemo has the ability to provide relevant and specific answers based on the training (maintenance SOPs, case sheets, and so on) to help solve the problem. It is akin to conversing with an expert. With more data and continuous training, the assistant keeps getting better and better.
All of our efforts towards digital transformation have resulted in significant improvement in business KPIs. Key ones are listed below:
- Significant reduction in defect parts per million and cost of poor quality
- Tangible improvement in production lead times
- Higher on-time delivery figures
- Reduction in mean time to repair machinery and components
- Substantial increase in first pass yield
- Reduction in production losses
- Boosted workforce productivity
- Reduction in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions
- Reduction in overall manufacturing costs
Credit: ACG World
Managing change
What was most inspiring for us at ACG World in this journey was the people. With the right purpose and an enabling environment, people can come together to make remarkable things happen. It’s all about change management. Going through the journey of change from a mindset of “I know my job and do not interfere” to “this change is exciting, let’s make it happen together” takes significant time and effort. It is important for companies to think about how they manage this change and to look at what areas worked well during implementation – and what can be improved for future initiatives.
Based on our experience with the team at the Pithampur facility, the following factors proved essential in managing change successfully:
- Executive sponsorship and regular leadership reviews
- Clear and consistent communications, including workshops with plant stakeholders that explained the vision and roadmap for transformation, the expected change and its impact
- Jointly selecting relevant use cases that provide business value with plant operations
- Continuous engagement and involvement of workforce on the ground
- Plant visits outside the organization to help increase knowledge and develop benchmarks
- Freedom for the team to explore new technologies
- Freedom to fail
- Rewards and recognition
The way forward
New technologies are emerging at an exponential pace. I’m delighted with what we have achieved so far, but there is still more that could be done in the future. Something that excites me greatly is the fusion of AI, digital twin, and industrial automation. Digital twins powered by sensor fusion, real-time data acquisition, modeling, and visualization technologies can help create a digital replica of the physical environment, while AI can help with intelligent decision making. And then industrial automation, whether through conventional actuator systems, automated guided vehicles, robotics, quadrupeds, or humanoids can enable actions based on intelligent decisions made by AI. The fusion of these technologies could lead to fully autonomous lights-out factories.
Five Technologies I’d Love to See
- Artificial general intelligence
- Foundational models for robotics
- Teleportation
- Industrial applications enabled by quantum computing
- Mainstream usage of humanoids for hazardous, repetitive, and difficult jobs
Getting into the Global Lighthouse Network
The selection process involves four key steps.
- Online application. Applicants are required to provide details using an online application form, which covers specific details about the manufacturing plant, relevant use cases deployed, scale and depth of implementation, the impact created (financial, operational, sustainability), organizational enablers, and change management. Successful applicants are shortlisted for an in-person site visit.
- In-person site visit by the World Economic Forum (WEF). A team will visit the manufacturing plant to understand and assess the Industry 4.0 journey of the organization, including use cases deployed, scale and depth of the implementation, impact created, change enablers, the technology ecosystem, and more.
- Site report. After the site visit is completed, a detailed report is prepared covering all the salient aspects.
- Selection. Specifics from the site visit report are presented to an independent panel of experts from both industry and academia. This panel then decides which applicants will become part of The Global Lighthouse Network.
The selection criteria comprises the following important facets.
- Review of integrated use cases. In the context of The Global Lighthouse Network, an integrated use case is an application of an Industry 4.0 solution to either solve a significant business problem or substantially improve operations. This generally translates into end-to-end Industry 4.0 solutions.
- The scale and depth of implementation. The WEF team assesses the deployment and adoption of solutions across the manufacturing plant.
- The impact achieved. What key performance indicators have markedly improved? Areas assessed include production, quality, cost, lead time, productivity, sustainability, energy consumption and other relevant areas impacted by the use cases deployed.
- Assessment of enablers, including organizational structure, transformation office, the technology infrastructure, the technology ecosystem, change management approach, organizational policies, and overall workforce enablement.
Chief Digital Officer at ACG World
