Machine manufacturers today face a volatile market environment, pressuring them to adopt new approaches for developing next-generation products. Rahul Garg, Vice President for Industrial Machinery and SMB at Siemens Digital Industries Software explains.
As always, there are the ever-present pressures of quality, cost and performance as we enter 2024. At the same time, sustainability requirements are now front and centre. The focus is on lowering energy usage, reducing carbon and minimising scrap and waste.
In addition, larger global trends are impacting manufacturers around the world, while social-political shifts are also leading to changes in business models – including reshoring, servitisation and new market entrants. They also see opportunities in emerging areas, moving from well-established domains into adjacent or new markets.
For example, paper machine manufacturers are expanding into battery machine manufacturing to meet the sharp rise in demand for electric vehicles, the same can be said for machine builders in the glass industry. However, workforce shortages – both for machine builders and manufacturing operations – are increasing the need for automation. The factory of the future is now developing around the paradigms of sustainability, flexibility and the future workforce.
Advances in technology are providing opportunities for manufacturers to thrive, despite the industry’s myriad of challenges. These new capabilities are made possible by the greater intelligence and wealth of data generated by digitalisation, which integrates digital tools, systems and IoT data, connecting previously siloed information across design, engineering, production and service.
With digitalisation, manufacturers can move beyond automation to more predictive and adaptive production environments. Adaptive manufacturing delivers the flexibility to enable effortless switching of production with changing market and customer needs. Moreover, it simplifies the workflow systems so manufacturers can do more with the same workforce.
Digitalisation lowers manufacturing risk by creating more flexible processes and accessing crucial data across the many engineering and production disciplines. Weaving the data from all these once-siloed disciplines requires solutions built on an in-depth understanding of machine design, simulation, factory automation and project lifecycle management (PLM).
This renaissance in manufacturing requires digitalising the entire lifecycle of the production process including the production machinery — and it begins in design by creating the digital twin of the smart machine. Throughout the design process, the machine’s digital twin is developed based on multi-disciplinary engineering that encompasses the machine’s mechanical, software, electrical and automation systems.
This digital twin is initially used for design exploration and evaluation in virtual prototyping. Once the machine is ready for deployment, the digital twin of the machine enables virtual commissioning before the machine is physically installed, allowing for machine familiarity and operator training – significantly minimising the risk and time needed for deployment.
Once installed in the factory, the machine’s digital twin is continually enriched with data from actual operations across the machine’s lifetime. This benefit creates a closed loop between the real and digital representation. With increasing fidelity, this operational digital twin delivers invaluable performance insights, enabling the manufacturing team to continually monitor and improve manufacturing efficiencies and quality.
The digital twin improves operational reliability, managing the machine’s service lifecycle management by providing data and insights on when a machine needs maintenance, helping to eliminate unplanned downtime or machine damage. It can also accelerate new product introduction, with the manufacturing team test-driving potential processes before committing to physical changes on the shop floor.
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