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MiMfg Magazine
May 2019
Technology Can Help You “Get There”
By Chuck Werner • The Center
This is the second part of a two-part series. Part 1
was published in the 2019 MFG Forum event program.
Check out the full series at mimfg.org and search
keywords: Business Maturity .
Taking a business from its original form and guiding
it to become a learning organization is a challenge. A
lot of heavy lifting can be involved and, quite frankly,
many people are so tied up in day-to-day operations
that trying to find the time and information to work
on the business can be difficult. Unless a company is
blessed with a “people closet” to pull additional
resources from, the efforts may fall short with regard
to either resource or priority, causing the improvement
initiatives to fail. Leveraging technology can help to
reduce the resource drain on the leadership team
and can not only result in quicker improvements,
but ones that will be easier to sustain and build on.
Beginning in the reactive phase, an organization
“does not know what they do not know,” meaning
they are unaware of how their business is really
performing. In order to progress and improve their
operations, they must begin gathering data to gain
more insight into the strengths and weaknesses of
their current practices.
However, asking people who are already task-
saturated to fill out additional paperwork is never a
popular move — and it doesn’t stop there. That
paperwork also must be collected, tracked, compiled,
reported and shared before it can even be considered.
This additional demand on resources can result in
failures to collect data as well as delays in receiving
it. Using sensors and the Industrial Internet of Things
(IIOT), the data collection process can be automated so
that additional burden is not placed on team members.
And, rather than keeping file cabinet after file cabinet
of stored sheets, the data can be saved electronically
on-site or in the cloud in a secure manner.
But as has been noted many times by many people;
data is just data until it can be analyzed and turned into
information. It is only then that the organization
“knows what they don’t know.” They also learn that
there are pockets of information existing which should
be available to a larger number of team members. Using
dashboards to provide real-time information and
system integration, a greater number of resources can
be used to understand the information and identify
ways to prevent, and eventually predict, when a
negative or unusual outcome is about to occur. Since
the Big Data generates itself, the body of information
available will be much larger and more accurate than
before. As the team begins to identify Key Input
Variables (also known as leading indicators), they
Business Maturity Steps
Additive Manufacturing /
Simulation /
Robotics & Cobotics /
Augmented Reality
Autonomous Manufacturing
System Integration /
Big Data / Analytics
“We know how to do it better.”
Predictive
Sensors / IIOT /
Cloud Computing /
Cyber Security
“We know what we know.”
Preventive
“We know what we don’t know.”
Cognitive
“We don’t know what we don’t know.”
Reactive
Product/Process Optimization
Operational Excellence
Process Stabilization
Metrics and Measurement
can use the integrated systems and dashboards to
communicate the likelihood of issues before they
occur, allowing the team enough time to take
appropriate actions. Again, technology allows us to
achieve more with the resources we have, rather
than asking more of already-taxed resources.
Once the business begins looking at ways to design
all variation and waste out of their products, processes
and services, technology should again be considered.
Ask yourself, for example, if inspection failures are
an issue, can the process be automated through cobotics/
robotics to ensure 100 percent performance of the task
or to reduce measurement inaccuracies? Can augmented
reality be used to provide relevant data in real time or
to assist team members in achieving a higher level of
training? Through simulation and virtualization, can
failure modes be better predicted and then eliminated?
And finally, could your product be better made using
additive technologies rather than subtractive? Leveraging
technology at this level to support product, workforce
and process improvements can ultimately help a company
achieve and maintain autonomous manufacturing.
Manufacturers are often intimidated by technological
implementations due to the high costs, time and
labor they assume they will have to invest. But if
effectively applied, technology can make the team
members more effective by eliminating the time the
team spends trying to define a situation, through the
delivery of real-time information. This allows them
not only the flexibility to not only respond to (and
capitalize on) situations; but also provides them the
available time to focus on ways to do things better.
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Chuck Werner is a lean program manager for
the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center
(The Center). He may be reached at 734-451-4244
or [email protected].
Get More!
Read the first half of this series at mimg.org
(search keywords Business Maturity ).