Digitalisation in Industry

Nowadays, digitalisation is more important than ever for manufacturers. In today's global economy, where unanticipated global events can impact business at every level of an enterprise, companies need tools to manage this change. To adapt to shifting consumer and policy needs, businesses must be able to handle unpredictable demand, interrupted supply chains, manage inventory costs, and maintain constant innovation to stay competitive.

What is Digitalisation?

Digitalisation is the process of transferring information (knowledge) across a company via digital communication. With the goal of providing complete supply chain visibility, it is transitioning from paper-based, department-siloed communication to comprehensive enterprise visibility at any given time. Through digitalisation, companies can showcase novel customer interfaces (such as online 3D product configurators), new digital business models (such as service packages via data monitoring), and enhance internal operations (such as inventory control and machine downtime).

An ERP system, for instance, can manage a customer order (see article - Introduction to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and open source solutions) and maintenance staff can use the same data to optimise schedules to keep assets functioning without affecting delivery dates.

Digitalisation can transform a company's ability to innovate in product development by establishing a single source of truth (such as CAD, documentation, repair manuals, manufacturing methods, previous iterations) and enabling cross-organisational collaboration. For example, a PLM (product lifecycle management) system can enable sales, manufacturing, design, and maintenance teams to collaborate on product design to ensure it meets customer demands and business objectives.

From enterprise and product management to the machine level, digitalisation has the potential to make data from machines (such as repair manuals, operating conditions, and service reports) instantly available to the maintenance team, thereby reducing downtime. This process results in the creation of a Digital Twin—a virtual replica of a physical machine that enables real-time data analysis and decision-making—and what businesses can look to achieve as their North Star for operational efficiencies. Digital twins enable businesses to make decisions based on instant information.

Let's look at the process of manufacturing a mechanical components to compare paper based vs digitalised organisation.

Case Study: The Nuts and Bolts Company's Transformation

Imagine a company in UK, making nuts and bolts for heat exchangers used in the food processing industry. Each nut and bolt is specific to the machine builder's requirements, necessitating custom solutions. They are a classic example of a 'high mix, low volume' shop.

The company has a history of making excellent products that last the lifetime of machines, but in the past few years it has struggled to grow; their experienced engineers are close to retiring, and international competition is driving down margins. However, the company has not done anything different recently; they still provide outstanding customer service, still meticulously design the products, and still work with their manufacturing teams to ensure the product quality always meets customer demands.

Let's look at how they handle receiving a new order.

• Design: Each order involves taking a standard part in CAD software, customising it, and creating new drawings for the product. Experienced engineers store the CAD data for new parts in a local folder and approve the final drawings. During this phase, the manufacturing and design teams work together to ensure that designs are accurate and adhere to design-for-manufacture principles.
• Manufacturing: Every process necessitates a physical drawing, and the design team scribbles any non-manufacturable requirements on the drawing before sending it back. If a tool or material becomes necessary during the process, the procurement team raises an order. If any non-conformance occurs on the manufacturing shop floor, it takes time to go back to the design team to determine how it should be rectified. All parts are measured to the drawing specification, and the customer receives a final CoC (certificate of conformity).
• Customer service and sales: track all orders using email and Excel, and then send the requirements to the design team for development. There is no opportunity for customers to customise the solution themselves. Any issue with the product in service requires engineers to visit the supplier site, assess the problem, and then communicate back to the design or manufacturing team to produce a new part.

Looking at the process as a whole, there is not much wrong with how the company is doing business; they are still producing excellent products, collaborating internally, and customers are still coming back to them with new orders. However, the costs are still high, and they still lack the ability to scale to new markets.

Now let's look at how this company started their digitalisation journey by small incremental steps. This step can vary from company to company and what they are looking to achieve from their investment—is it cycle time reduction, high workforce utilisation, automation to meet declining engineering talent, and there are many more reasons what that investment could look like. For this company, the issue they want to tackle is the ability to predict with confidence their throughput capacity to OEMs and ability to forecast delivery dates accurately.

The company invested in factory simulation software (see article: - Modelling a small cafe in SimPy). By digitising their whole factory operations, the organisation was able to accurately schedule work orders and confidently showcase capacity to larger OEMs. This ability to highlight capacity, evaluate bottlenecks, and virtually test investment opportunities like automation is a big win for this organisation.

By starting a small pilot program for digitalisation, the company could bring their workforce with them on the journey, and as current technology delivers ROI, they could continue investing in other solutions like ERP, PLM, MES, and IIoT technologies.