ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘industry-4-0’ CATEGORY

Former Google Enterprise sales leader, Nathan Radar, will drive client acquisition strategy to the next level, connected worker platform firms says.

Rader said: "Industrial companies are facing pressure to address high-priority operational challenges and improve execution of key frontline business processes. I've been in technology for 20 years, and it's rare to find a robust platform like Parsable that can be deployed quickly and show quick time to value. The flexibility of the platform is a game-changer in the industrial world, and I'm excited to be a part of the digital transformation taking place inside industrial workforces."

 

Ericsson has launched Ericsson Industry Connect, an easy-to-use cellular connectivity solution to accelerate Industry 4.0 digital transformation.

Ericsson Industry Connect enables communication service providers to offer dedicated cellular networks at factories and warehouses starting with 4G/LTE, with a clear path to 5G.

The offering strengthens Ericsson’s private networks and IoT portfolios by making 4G and 5G technologies accessible to new industrial markets.

Purpose-built for industrial environments such as factories and warehouses, the dedicated cellular connectivity solution enables secure, reliable coverage with high device density and predictable latency.

With a network management experience designed to be easy to use and manage for information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) professionals, the solution aims to make cellular technology rapidly deployable for factory and warehouse staff.
With industrial-grade wireless connectivity, Ericsson Industry Connect can enable innovative Industry 4.0 use cases such as: digital twin inspection (a real-time digital replica of a physical entity) with massive amounts of sensors; mobility for human machine interface (HMI) instructions for workers; collision avoidance and remote control for autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs); and collaborative robotics for automated operations.

Åsa Tamsons, Senior Vice President, Head of Business Area Technologies and New Businesses, Ericsson, says: “Ericsson Industry Connect is built on design thinking to meet industrial customers’ requirements on speed, reliability and security, while being easy to install and manage. It helps enterprises to accelerate their automation and operational efficiency to the next level. It complements service providers’ offerings to enterprises with a solution that is easy to scale. Ericsson Industry Connect increases the relevance of cellular solutions in the high growing segment of industrial connectivity - leveraging Ericsson’s technology leadership, strength in connectivity, and R&D investments to date.”

Digital Twins have been discussed in tech circles for a while now, but their potential value in field service is still only just beginning to filter through, Manuel Grenacher, SAP Field Service Management, explains the role they could play in improving service delivery. 

Have you ever considered the possibilities and potential of digital twins for your customer service?  Don’t worry, we are not talking about virtual figures in cyberspace that are modelled after the user just like avatars.

A digital twin represents a real object in the digital world. Digital twins are composed of data and algorithms and can be coupled with the real world via sensors.  They form the basis for a digital customer service and other industry 4.0 related processes. In short, “digital twins” recreate a system in the computer. Ideally, data from the engineering phase – from 3D models to detailed information on installed components – is transferred to the operating phase.

Sensors provide live information on operating conditions, and in addition, all technical innovations on the system, such as the installation of a spare part, are tracked in the “digital twin”. Users benefit from more accurate real-time information and they get a detailed “reference book” with all service information they need.

But how can companies use the advantages of digital twins for their customer service? Digital twins enable the implementation of predictive maintenance since they allow data to be assigned to specific plant conditions. Thus, changing measuring conditions often show in advance that a certain component will fail in the foreseeable future. This allows planned system downtimes to be better coordinated and repair cycles to be adapted to expected failure probabilities.

Requirements For Digital Twins In Service
Sufficient sensors and a systematic evaluation of the data are the essential basis to predict imminent component failures – an approach that is already feasible today. However, technical possibilities are still far from being exhausted right now.

Due to ongoing depreciations or for other economic reasons, companies are only gradually investing in plants equipped with modern IoT technology. IoT, however, will become more affordable in the near future. Sensors will therefore spread continuously while at the same time becoming easier to use, more resistant and cheaper.

"A digital twin represents a real object in the digital world..."

Enabling New Business Models, A Recipe For Digital Success
Industry 4.0 cannot work without a well-planned and technologically underpinned digital service concept, because service is an essential part of digitization. Many companies today already try to stand out with the quality of their service rather than just great products since they are often too similar, even exchangeable.

Customers therefore primarily choose the partner that offers more and faster service. The goal of every company should therefore be to better understand its customers, create better touchpoints and improve service.

This is where new concepts such as “machine-asa-service” become more and more important: companies only purchase the performance of a machine instead of the machine itself – including the service to ensure constant performance. Service Lifecycle Management plays a central role in this concept. In the future, entire ecosystems will emerge from new service providers using concepts like this.

Digital Twins Will Revolutionize Customer Service
Digital twins with their immense data material in both service and business intelligence offer the potential to create entirely new areas of business. Sensors allow to map and control machine statuses and product quality in real time – as well as predicting problems at an early stage. This way, service can intervene before expensive machine failures occur.

Furthermore, companies can dynamically adapt maintenance intervals to actual requirements on the basis of live information. In the future, all of a company’s systems as well as all of its spare parts, tools, containers and products, will be represented by their “digital mirror images”, a complete factory in the computer. The large amount of data that can be collected using digital twins in combination with artificial intelligence evaluation will provide stunning new insights into the interaction of operating processes.

This will lead to fully automated smart factories, which, thanks to artificial intelligence and digital twins, can control themselves practically without human intervention

Manuel Grenacher, is GM at SAP Field Service Management.

We are undoubtedly entering a new era of technology, automation and innovation, but in a world of rapid industrial evolution how will regulations also adapt? 

Oliver Rickett, Solicitor, and Caroline Churchill, Partner, at law firm Womble Bond Dickinson  share their insights on this crucial topic... 

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"Everything is true… everything anybody has ever thought." Philip K. Dick – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

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It is impossible to escape from the fact that technology, and increasingly artificial intelligence (AI), has transformed everyday life.

It all started with how we play our music, but Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa (along with other similar "virtual assistants") now have a daily interface with many of us. We are also, increasingly, now daily users of the Internet of Things (IoT) – connecting up smart fridges, boilers and alarm systems, each controllable from a smartphone. The "everyday" form of AI is almost unavoidable in the modern home, but, while not necessarily as obvious to you and me, there is also an ongoing, yet unseen growth in AI in the manufacturing sector.  What is still lacking, however, is concrete regulation in place for the use and development of AI in the industry.

This article looks at where AI regulation might be implemented and, specifically, what impact both AI has, and its regulation would have, on the manufacturing industry and what role the UK might have in this ever-changing sector.

 

What is "Industry 4.0" and how is AI related?

The term "Industry 4.0" is not a new one.  It relates back to discussions in 2012 of a forthcoming "Fourth Industrial Revolution", the idea being that the current trend of automation would increase, with technology enabling "smart factories". These factories take existing automated assembly line structures and include a cyber element, allowing for the underlying manufacturing machinery to communicate with one another and with the wider factory system as a whole via an IoT setup – increasing efficiency.

Machines with autonomy

The whole process is, and would still be, overseen by a human element, who the machines can also communicate with.  But one of the main goals of Industry 4.0 is to have the machines operating in a decentralised way and with as much autonomy as possible save only where exceptions, interferences or conflicting goals require additional input.

 

How is AI being used currently?

"So far, so sci-fi" you might think, but Industry 4.0 is alive across our manufacturing industry and there are already plenty of examples of manufacturers using this kind of technology across the sector.  Developments are being pioneered by high-end technology companies such as Tesla, Intel and Microsoft on an international scale, some through mere investment or others through actual manufacturing and application.

AI efficiencies and cost savings

Siemens has been using neural networks for a number of years in monitoring the efficiencies of their steel plants.  Siemens is now using this prior experience to make waves in the manufacturing AI sector, using AI to monitor variables (e.g. temperature) on their gas turbines which then adjusts the operation of the machine for increased efficiency and without unwanted by-products.

Others use system masters to spot potential problems and possible solutions, often before a human operator would notice such issues.  The use of this technology has resulted in positive improvements across their smart factories, reducing maintenance costs, as AI can now detect wear on machinery long before it becomes unmanageable.

 

The UK's role in AI and plans for regulation

In the UK, The Manufacturer's Annual Manufacturing Report 2018 conducted a survey on the possibility of a more widespread use of "smart factories" - 92% of senior manufacturing executives believe that digital technologies (including AI) will enable them to increase productivity levels.  Yet, the UK is generally seen as "lagging behind" many other developed countries when it comes to implementing AI in the manufacturing sector.  Is this an example of the UK "traditional mindset"?  With estimates on global turnover of the "smart manufacturing" market soaring to a projected $320bn by 2020 – let's hope not!

Sector-led regulation

Despite technology advancing at a rapid pace, regulation of AI is yet to emerge.  Whilst some commentators have theorised a Skynet-style AI uprising if the sector remains as unregulated as it is today, the UK government has provided a more pragmatic voice. According to the House of Lords Select Committee's report on AI[1], the UK "is in a strong position to be a world leader in the development of artificial intelligence" and with this comes some required element of regulation.

The report "AI in the UK: Ready, Willing and Able?" makes several recommendations as to how the law may need to be updated to account for these new technologies, but also states that "blanket AI-specific regulation, at this stage, would be inappropriate". The Lords instead believe that a sector-specific approach should be taken, with three new governmental organisations (the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI), the AI Council and the Government Office for AI) each taking a lead role in developing regulatory policy going forwards.

Manufacturing sector

For the manufacturing sector, this is expected to cover a number of areas. A key area of focus is likely to be the availability of data access.  AI systems are notoriously expensive and this could clearly impact on the revenues of SMEs struggling to compete financially with international corporations if they were to be further bolstered by AI. A possible solution suggested by the Lords is to implement an "Open Banking" style model where some data can be made public in order to make the sector, as a whole, more competitive.

Safety concerns

Terminator references aside, safety is also one of the primary concerns in this new technology. The current law is a long way from Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics" and currently fails to address liability issues if, for example, a worker was to be injured by a machine malfunction. As with all policy issues at the moment, the spectre of Brexit looms large and is specifically referred to in the Lords' report as an area of concern since many of the UK's AI initiatives are run jointly with EU counterparts.

Impact on workforce

Finally, aside from direct regulation, businesses across the sector must prepare themselves for potential changes in personnel. Much has been made of how AI will "cost jobs" but the reality is that work in this field is expected to create as many as are lost. It will be more a matter of retraining current staff to deal with the new equipment, and each business will have to assess how much of an impact this will have on their own operation.

AI promotion of innovation and growth

The use of AI in manufacturing will inevitably increase over the short-to-medium term before becoming the "norm" and with an encouraging approach taken by the Lords, aligned with UK Government – who are committed to regulation "that promotes innovation and the growth of new sectors while protecting citizens and the environment", it is likely that we can expect domestic investment in AI as well as the inevitable international investment.

Sustainable regulation required

As with all rapidly growing technologies, the focus should be on sustainable regulation (such as the recent developments in UK law on the use of drones).  However, while the regulatory forecast is still uncertain, what is becoming clear is a real sense of opportunity.

AI - an opportunity for all

With the possibility of the UK being front-and-centre of the new age for manufacturing, there is huge potential for our manufacturing and technology clients:

• those that embrace the change and move towards a technology-focused approach away from the traditional "industrial" style will surely benefit from the efficiencies that come with that change, and
• for the smaller UK SMEs and start-ups out there – dream big!  With the AI sector in such an early stage of development and with many larger corporations lacking the technological know-how (for the time being) to trail-blaze the industry, UK start-ups, with the technological background, have the opportunity to partner or contract with large industrials and have their say on what the future of the manufacturing sector looks like.

Womble Bond Dickinson takes a sector-based approach in all work that we do for our clients and are particularly strong in both manufacturing and technology.  If you have any comments or queries in relation to this article, AI in general, or questions about how we can help your business grow and embrace this new landscape, please get in touch.