Thirty seven representatives from twenty six New Zealand and three Australian manufacturing companies, two business organisations (The Manufacturers’ Network and the EMA) and two government funded innovation agencies (Callaghan Innovation and the Australian IMCRC) have all combined into a study group to investigate advanced manufacturing technology at the Internet of Manufacturing Conference in Chicago and through visits to a number of U.S. manufacturing companies last week.

The week was an exciting opportunity to gain insight into what U.S companies are doing in the networked manufacturing and Industry 4.0 space.  There is a lot New Zealand manufacturers can learn about what works and what doesn’t – however, at the end of the day, Kiwi manufacturers have to find what works for them.

It starts with getting LEAN / Continuous Improvement processes in order and incrementally investing in technology which provides the greatest productivity improvements for their business.

The trip included a visit to Haas, a global brand in CNC machines, and a remarkable success story of a manufacturer that has managed to grow rapidly while keeping all of its manufacturing activities in the USA.

We also visited the Trumpf Smart Factory in Schaumburg, Chicago. This is a fully operational sheet metal factory that functions as a technology showcase for sales purposes and as an Industry 4.0 technology test lab at the same time, focusing on end-to-end integration of systems and processes. We were able to see an example of individually-customised products coming through the production line, from start to finish, making use of advanced manufacturing technology to make such customisation possible.  

We also visited two industry-good organisations that were really impressive. One was the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII), part of UI Labs, a collaboration between industry, government agencies and several universities, with a simple mission statement – to transform industries using digital technologies. DMDII have established a comprehensive Learning Factory that holds a range of advanced manufacturing equipment that people can configure for their specific purpose and try out.

The second one was mHub, a dedicated incubator for budding manufacturers. Above and beyond what’s usually involved in an incubator, mHub has a broad range of manufacturing equipment that manufacturing entrepreneurs can come in and use for the early-stage development of their business – including surface-mounting machines, a laser cutter and several 3D printers.

If only we had something like that in New Zealand!

Otherwise one of the key insights from the trip is that American manufacturers, even the larger ones, are still at the early stages of adopting the truly novel aspects of advanced manufacturing technologies.

They are well-versed in the more conventional aspects like statistical process control or robots, but still in the early stages when it comes to using cobots or digital twins, for example.

Overall, the impression at least from our limited experience so far is that European manufacturers are further ahead than their US counterparts when it comes to adopting Industry 4.0 / Internet of Manufacturing technologies in general.

-Dieter Adam