Smart Manufacturing Today

Are you leaving productivity on the factory floor?

Gemma Stanbridge, ViAGO International Limited We all have heard how important it is to have workers who are engaged with their roles and motivated to put their best into what they do. Despite this, recent research reports only 12% of construction, manufacturing, and production workers worldwide are engaged in their roles.[1] Sixty-four percent of workers in this sector are not engaged, with 24% of workers actively disengaged. Manufacturing workers particularly struggle with engagement, and this is often due to a process-focus rather than an employee-centred focus that promotes engagement. Workers in production roles are less likely to have any say in determining how their day will be structured or what could be done to improve their job or workplace. In fact, manufacturing and production workers have the lowest rates of engagement among employees worldwide¹. And yet, the primary approaches to improving productivity in this sector focus on process optimisation. Why are we leaving productivity on the factory floor? The Problem with Process-Centred Approaches to Productivity Conventional management in manufacturing continues to put processes ahead of people, despite evidence that employee engagement is a significant factor in productivity. Discussions about increasing productivity focus on getting more out of resources using cost-cutting, efficiency and utilisation targets. Factories with this mentality often offer low wages for long hours, and although workers are expected to increase output and reduce lead times, their efforts are seldom recognised. Unsurprisingly, there’s little motivation for workers to do more than ‘the bare minimum,’ and workers may even act out due to feelings of frustration and the perception they are not valued by management. Management must consider that employees are an important element of any Productivity Journey, and a mindset shift from cost and efficiency measures can increase employee engagement and productivity. A Closer Look at the Impact of […]

Low cost process monitoring for CNC transfer machines

Innovative new application software enables users of high throughput, multi-process CNC machine tools to implement process monitoring without incurring any additional hardware costs. The software is likely to be of especial interest to users of high-end production systems such as transfer machines, where even relatively small operating issues can rapidly escalate into much larger, more expensive problems unless proactive remedial action is taken. Through real-time monitoring of the power/current values of the electric motors on a transfer machine throughout its milling, turning or grinding processes, it is possible to minimise system downtime and maintain production quality by guarding against faults. Typically, these would include worn or damaged tools and undersize or oversize workpiece blanks. Known as NUMmonitor, the software initially operates in ‘learn’ mode to acquire the varying loads and drive currents of motors when the CNC machine tool is running at optimal performance levels and with a sharp new tool. Up to eight motors can be monitored simultaneously throughout the machine’s operating cycle, and the software accommodates up to 11 different error detection criteria per motor. In the case of multi-NCK systems, a further 8 motors can be monitored for each additional NCK. On transfer machines, it is generally sufficient to monitor just the load (power) of the spindle motors. Both the level and duration of each load event that occurs during the ‘learn’ cycle are measured and recorded, and the process can be repeated to obtain average values. There is no limit to the number of different load events that can be accommodated during a complete machine cycle. Minimum and maximum curves are automatically generated from the ‘learn’ cycles, with the user able to define the types of error detection and the logic (for combining different error criteria, if desired). These machine cycle-time related operating parameters form ‘known […]

New equity deal announced for industry automation specialist

CR Automation managing director Peter Jenkins. An award-winning industry automation specialist is set to significantly extend its market reach thanks to a new equity partnership with a horticultural heavyweight. Following recent collaboration on a number of projects, CR Automation (CRA) has decided to sell a 50 per cent equity stake to Jenkins Group – a key industry player throughout Australasia’s horticulture post-harvest industry. With subsidiaries in New Zealand and Australia (Tauranga-based Jenkins Freshpac Systems Ltd and NSW-based J-Tech Systems PTY), Jenkins Group provides an extensive range of labelling, packaging and handling systems to the fruit and vegetable industry across both countries. Hawke’s Bay-based CR Automation provides automation, robotic and post-harvest solutions to a broad range of industries including food and beverage, water and wastewater, materials handling, cool storage, meat and wool processing and general manufacturing. Managing Director Peter Richards says the 18-year-old tech company has experienced exponential growth over the past three years and has been looking for an equity partner who could help sustain that growth and ensure longevity. “We wanted a partner founded on similar ideals who would add value and provide market access beyond our existing client base,” Richards explains. “Jenkins Group are an innovative, family-owned company with 136 years of success behind them. They are very client-focused and trade with a high level of integrity which is an excellent fit for us.” Innovation is at the core of both companies, and CRA won the “Most Innovative Solution” award for ABB robotics at the 2019 ASIA Value Provider Conference. Richards says he is immensely proud of the engineering capacity the CRA team has developed and recent growth was primarily due to a strategic initiative of developing bespoke material handling and machinery for a broad range of industry players. “Jenkins were very impressed by CR Automation’s engineering capacity […]

Innovative 3D solutions for AEC Industry

FARO, renowned for 3D imaging solutions for construction BIM, has an innovative set of 3D solutions specifically developed for AEC professionals. FARO Indoor Mobile Scanner As 3D Laser Scanning becomes more ubiquitous across various industries, there is an ever increasing need to make the scanning process and data processing more efficient. Conventionally, this has been addressed with a variety of mobile mapping solutions. However, these solutions typically have limitations in terms of accuracy and data fidelity. The Indoor Mobile Scanning solution enables kinematic 3D scans to be completed up to 7X faster than a series of traditional, fixed point scans over comparable areas. Thus, projects that took days can be executed in just a few hours. Additionally, as the Mobile Scanner includes fixed scan capability as a standard feature, users can simply switch to high-fidelity scan mode in real time for seamless integration with mobile scan data. The Indoor Mobile Scanner solution combines several leading technologies, including FARO’s patented Focus Laser Scanner technology, which have been optimised to operate in concert. Current owners of Focus Laser Scanners or ScanPlan products will have a simple upgrade path to the Indoor Mobile Scanning solution, which protects their original purchase investment. FARO As-Built Modeller FARO As-Built Modeler Software enables AEC professionals to leverage the smoothest Scan to BIM workflow in the industry to date. As-Built Modeler is specifically designed to minimise the effort and time required to create as-built documentation, which is the main task across AEC professionals in the building, facility and infrastructure design phases. This comprehensive and innovative platform automates many cumbersome processing steps that must be performed manually today. Powerful tools allow the easy creation of CAD objects that can be directly imported in any CAD system independent of the specific CAD software, dramatically simplifying the modelling workflow for FARO […]

Worried about artificial intelligence?

Productivity Commission Chair, Murray Sherwin, CNZM We’ve been asked at the Productivity Commission to explore the impact of technological change on the future of work. This month we released New Zealand, technology and productivity – the first of four reports on the topic. We’ve been assigned the task because Ministers are genuinely troubled about the potential for emerging technology, especially robotics and artificial intelligence, to replace workers, undermine the security of work and working conditions, and in doing so, disrupt the labour market and the social order, and undermine wider community wellbeing. There is certainly no shortage of pundits telling us that most jobs will disappear or change fundamentally and that we should prepare for a very different future of work. Our approach is to try to understand what is going on so that we can respond to developments that are real, rather than imagined or assumed. What are the channels by which new technologies enter and diffuse through the New Zealand economy? Adoption of new technology happens as the result of decisions made by individual firms – large and small – across an economy. The ambition for improved profitability and growth are key drivers. We know that adoption of new technologies requires access to capital and may require other complementary investments as well. It’s not usually just a simple case of buying a new machine or computer programme; firms may need to reorganise their business or change their business model. That’s quite an investment and most firms don’t take those decisions lightly. Firms will make decisions in the context of how well their industry and the overall economy is performing, and their owners’ appetite for risk. But we know that when firms adopt tech and improve their bottom line, the country’s productivity also improves, giving us higher income growth […]

Team NZ gets a lift in lead up to Cup

NZ Crane Hire is on board as an official Team New Zealand supplier and is responsible for lifting the team’s race boat in and out of the water at its Viaduct Harbour base. Team New Zealand’s new 75-foot AC75 foiling monohull, Te Aihe, was lifted into the water for the first time recently with NZ Crane Hire’s Demag AC 250 all-terrain mobile crane. NZ Crane Hire’s Managing Director, Deane Manley, says the company has done thousands of large-scale lifts in its 60-year history but there was added pressure with many eyes watching the launch. “This boat is precious cargo and carries the hopes of a nation, so it is a little different. But essentially cranes are based on simple geometry, so it comes down to careful planning and a high level of skill from our crane drivers to get the job done well. “The team and I are also looking forward to playing a small part in helping the team defend the Cup in 2021,” he says. Mr Manley says the company will have a crane based permanently at the New Zealand syndicate in the lead up to and during the Cup in 2021. Grant Dalton, CEO Team New Zealand, says the build up to the America’s Cup would not be possible without NZ Crane Hire. “The boat weighs 6.5 tonnes and there are some very interesting winds around the Viaduct so getting the boat in and out of the water as safely and efficiently as possible on a regular basis is key.” The 36th America’s Cup is returning to Auckland’s waterfront in 2021 after Emirates Team New Zealand won the Cup in Bermuda in 2017. The racing period will take place from March 6th – March 21st. It will be a best-of-13, first-to-seven-points series.

Xcelerator speeds digital future of industry

Xcelerator is an integrated portfolio of software, services and application development platform that can be personalised and adapted to fit customer and industry-specific needs to help companies of all sizes become digital enterprises. Xcelerator combines the full portfolio of Siemens’ software for design, engineering and manufacturing with an expanded Mendix low-code, multiexperience application development platform. The Mendix platform now includes cloud and app services for digital engineering and Internet of Things (IoT) powered by MindSphere the cloud-based, open IoT operating system from Siemens, in addition to Mendix’s market-leading unified low-code and no-code development environments. Unique to Xcelerator, this platform drives digital transformation by enabling anyone in the ecosystem, including citizen developers and engineers to easily build, integrate and extend their existing data and systems.

From chicken feathers to fire retardant

Researchers at the University of Auckland have developed a way to turn chicken feathers into a high-performing fire retardant. Chicken is a popular source of protein in most parts of the world and millions of chickens are produced each year for us to eat – in New Zealand it’s estimated we each eat, on average, about 40 chickens a year. Billions of chicken feathers are produced by the poultry industry, most of which end up in the incinerator or landfill. Chicken feathers are, in short, an international waste problem. However, Distinguished Professor Debes Bhattacharyya of the Faculty of Engineering has found a way to use chicken feathers as a base for a fire retardant, one that is safer than many fire retardants, cheaper to produce, and solves an international waste problem at the same time. “People pay to get rid of chicken feathers,” he says. Chicken feathers are made of a keratinous material that is found in the hair, wool, horns and hooves of mammals. They are also naturally occurring flame inhibitors. Fire retardants are added to industrial and consumer products such as furniture, textiles, electronics, even Christmas trees, as well as building products such as insulation. Traditionally halogen compounds were added to create flame retardant material, but while they were effective they were highly toxic. “They might have saved you from death by burning, but have exposed people to many more effects that are detrimental to health. “Furthermore, as a result of the environmental long life and bioaccumulation, traces of the compounds have been detected in everything from household dust to breast milk, causing hormone-disrupting effects,” says Dr Bhattacharyya. As a result there has been a global shift away from halogenic retardants and toward other types of retardants among which ammonium polyphosphate (APP) is the most prominent. However, as […]

Very smart Australian manufacturing

Solar-powered furniture offers off-grid connection South Australian outdoor furniture brand Sedi has developed bespoke benches and shelter options for smart cities and regional areas. Bronte Modra, the director of Adelaide-based modular engineering company Specialised Solutions, created the Sedi range of park benches, parklets and bus stops in February this year. The smart shelters are built from sustainable timber and steel and have solar-powered lighting, integrated charging ports, WIFI and informational screens that all run off a battery. Modra said he created Sedi to fill a large hole in the Australian manufacturing market created by the burgeoning smart city movement. “People want to be connected to the furniture and to the web, and the greater society,” said Modra. “Everyone talks about smart cities but no one is really delivering a piece of smart furniture here. “We just saw a real need and something that we could make out of our existing facility.” The Sedi office is located at the Tonsley innovation district alongside technology companies such as SAGE Automation, which, together with JPE Design Studio, helped develop the furniture. Modra decided to make the units “off-grid” to attract buyers who couldn’t connect to a power source. “It being solar-powered gives us a lot more flexibility to where the Sedi is placed,” he said. “With Sedi we can go to regional, remote locations and open up connectivity there. “It’s also cost-saving measure for councils to install in the park [as] service connections are fairly expensive.” Modra said they weren’t “reinventing the wheel” with the furniture’s individual technological features, however these add-ons were compounded to develop a new brand of smart furniture fit for a multitude of environments. “We would like to see them absolutely everywhere: the typical bus stops on your streets, your typical parks, council parks and reserves,” he said. “But we’re really trying to tap […]

5G to enhance manufacturing efficiency

More than one million people have subscribed to a 5G mobile contract in South Korea, meaning demand for the high-speed technology has easily outpaced the country’s adoption of 4G. The need for speed isn’t just essential for rapid telecommunication — we’d all rather communicate using faster and more reliable methods. 5G has created quite the media buzz recently. Although uptake continues to face its challenges, with the Australian government banning Chinese telecommunication giant Huawei’s 5G rollout in the country on national security grounds, the world is racing to implement the infrastructure. Next generation 5G networks can be 100 times faster than 4G, making communication between devices and servers much faster. This opens up a wealth of possibilities for manufacturing, helping the industry to increase its competitiveness and boost efficiency. The instant era Manufacturing runs on a tight schedule. Margins are squeezed more than ever as products are increasingly varied, customised and complex. Factories need to receive and transmit a wealth of data to keep their equipment informed — and fast. Ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (URLLC) is a new service category that will be supported in 5G, created to meet the requirements for 5G in industrial applications. By making the most of this category, machines can receive greater roaming power. In fact, 5G has very low latency, around 10 milliseconds in comparison to the 20-30 milliseconds with 4G, so equipment can be monitored in real time by human workers. With plans to reduce this latency to as little as one millisecond, the factory floor will receive updates on machinery almost instantaneously. Cutting the cord According to Ericsson’s report on 5G’s potential, enhanced communication will also mean greater flexibility for manufacturing robots. 5G will handle more complex data transmissions, such as cloud robotics where the cloud’s processing is relevant for the immediate […]

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