Smart Manufacturing Today

People, not technology, shape the future of manufacturing

These are exciting times for manufacturing. A plethora of recent technological developments creates radically new opportunities for how we develop, manufacture, and deliver products globally. The headlines proclaim that “the robots are coming”, “jobs will be automated”, and “digitalisation is revolutionising production”. Many managers are excited, baffled, or both. Many jobseekers are worried. Three decades ago, leadership expert Warren Bennis envisioned that “the factory of the future will have only two employees: a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.” While this vision is witty, the idea of the fully automated “lights-out” factory still lingers. But there’s a different vision for the future of manufacturing, where people take centre stage. A vision where people make use of new technology to enable sustainable, socially responsible, and efficient manufacturing. In this context, putting people first may seem surprising. After all, have we not been told that robotics and digitalisation will complete processes more effectively and efficiently than humans? That machine learning is training machines to train machines? That artificial intelligence is even entering company boardrooms? While this may hold true for some tasks, the vast amount of other tasks will in fact remain largely unaffected in the near term. To debunk a myth: robots are automating processes, not jobs. What’s more, we think that these technological developments are good, not bad, for workers. Increased productivity frees up human resources to do tasks where humans are superior to machines. One example of such a task is the development of new technologies in the first place. Another equally important task is to figure out how to best apply them. People must map production processes, identify the nodes where technology is needed, and reskill the persons […]

Armoured wetsuit made of aluminium platelets

Australian global manufacturer Sevaan Group was handpicked by an innovative company to help create an armoured wetsuit for protecting commercial divers, Scuba divers, free divers and those into serious spear fishing. Known as ironskinn, the armoured wetsuit is made of extremely tough aluminium platelets held together by an elastic in-form setting. Sevaan Group was chosen for various reasons ahead of sizeable international competition, with one reason being its ability to interpret the requirements and set up CAD and manufacturing sequences to make the concept a physical reality. As ironskinn Managing Director Mr John Sundnes explains, Sevaan Group was very inquisitive about what was required and were excited about making a significant part of that product. “We are making the entire suit in NSW, so Sevaan’s Sydney base was a good start and ultimately as a company they showed patience as this was something that was never made before,” said Mr Sundnes. “A lot of finetuning was required and they were up for it; unlike other companies we approached whose attitude was ‘when you have a need for 100-offs then call us’. “It took probably 4-5 months because we had some tooling we needed made and Sevaan Group had good contacts to make that tooling a reality. “The platelets have a particular shape and particular curvature; thin metal can behave in unexpected ways so that part may come out a little differently compared to its CAD so we needed expertise to handle that.” The ironskinn protective dive suit is designed to protect divers from an unexpected shark bite, as well as to protect from other marine hazards such as oysters, mussels, barnacles and rotten metal from boats when working on them underwater, therefore offering a wide range of applications of material. Currently, the suit is on a pilot program with some […]

Seequent Drillhole-progress-being-shown-with-live-survey-data-from-the-IMDEXHUB-IQ

Seequent and IMDEX to deliver real-time 3D visualisation for minerals drilling projects

Industry-first to integrate live 3D data from ‘rig to model’ supports real-time decision-making and risk management for mining and exploration drilling projects Seequent, a developer of revolutionary visual data science software and IMDEX, a global leader in real-time subsurface intelligence solutions, have announced an ongoing partnership to deliver a real-time 3D visualisation solution for the mining and exploration industry to dramatically improve the speed and accuracy of decision-making for drilling projects. Seequent and IMDEX are collaborating to integrate IMDEXHUB-IQ™, which provides access to sub-surface data and Central, Seequent’s centralised model management solution for visualisation, tracking and management of an organisation’s geological data. The integration will allow live 3D data collected in the field and synced to IMDEXHUB-IQ to be linked in real-time to the same project in Central, enabling 3D visualisation of downhole survey and structural geology data. The mining industry-first enables drillhole progress to be reviewed in Central’s 3D Browser alongside the planned programme and current geological interpretation, giving geologists confidence in decision-making and ensuring issues are identified and managed as they arise. The new solution, showcased at Seequent’s Lyceum innovation event in Vancouver in November, is the first in a global road show series also visiting Perth and Santiagor. “The integration of live data is crucial for mining and exploration projects of the future. Every day there is an increasing amount of data generated and the key to success is being able to understand and respond to that data in real-time or near real-time,” says Nick Fogarty, Seequent General Manager – Mining and Minerals. “Our new co-partnered solution will provide significant benefits to our drilling and resource company clients in terms of risk management and project efficiencies.” IMDEX and Seequent are long-time industry partners, sharing a common interest in developing technology and better workflows to solve ongoing […]

Smarter manufacturing in the age of convergence

-Joseph Sousa, President, Asia Pacific, Rockwell Automation Sometimes I wish I was ten years younger. Not out of vanity but because of what’s about to unfold in the manufacturing industry. We’ve arrived at a genuine inflection point in how we go about business. There’s an opportunity to produce more high-quality goods for more people while reducing costs and environmental impact. This opportunity is being driven in part by a significant increase in consumer wealth. We’re witnessing the most significant expansion of the middle class that we’ve ever seen. Forecasted in 2016, 160 million people will join the ranks during the next five years. More than 3.2 billion people already enjoy this status. We’ve also seen a shift from manual production to mass production, customised mass production and now personalised mass production. We’ve improved our capacity to measure what people want and our ability to link this knowledge with production resources to meet those demands. This is information is critical in an age where consumers are demanding more personalised products. Today, Millennials, in particular, place a high value on adding their personality to what they buy. More than half of consumers would prefer to shape the products and services they buy. This type of personalised mass production requires a lot of flexibility in manufacturing processes. In the modern factory, set-up time is a key variable determining the ability to tap into short-term opportunities. Merely being able to see a chance isn’t enough. Global business opportunities mean global competition, increasing the imperative to act quickly. Whereas this global competition, once reserved for large international enterprises, most businesses now have potential rivals in other countries. The convergence of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) offers a smarter way to convert the business into opportunity. Data is helping many manufacturers to unleash the […]

Game changing Andrea Bubendorfer & Andrew Best -

Game-changing technology for 3D printing tiny structures revealed

A new type of 3D Printing technology enabling rapid prototyping of high-resolution microscale structures has been revealed. It all started after a kick-start from KiwiNet to commercialise the technology. New Zealand microfabrication researchers Andrea Bubendorfer and Andrew Best, the co-inventors of a new way of fabricating very small things with Laminated Resin Printing (LRP), are part of Callaghan Innovation’s MicroMaker3D team which launched the new patent pending technology in the US recently. The team are one of ten selected worldwide for IDTechEx’s Santa Clara Launchpad, an initiative showcasing new disruptive and state-of-the art technologies. Andrea, who leads the microfabrication team at Callaghan Innovation that has created the technology, says: “We’re very excited about the potential for this technology to be a game changer in a range of industries from medicine to wearable technology to aerospace. It will create the first opportunity to rapidly prototype a huge range of miniaturised structures from optical slits to miniaturised microwell plates, micromoulds and more. “Custom sensors are a great example of a niche area we’re keen to explore. One high value approach would be to use molecular sensing to functionalise microstructures, so we could rapid prototype devices for detecting insulin concentration, biomarkers, presence of toxic gases or pollutants. “There are endless possibilities to what we can print – and what is most exciting, though, will be when people start to print things we didn’t even know existed”, says Andrea. The MicroMaker3D project was kick-started when Andrea received KiwiNet Emerging Innovator Programme funding, commercialisation support and advice to explore ways to make microfabrication more accessible. “We ended up creating a new 3D printing technology that can build up tiny structures using specially engineered Laminated Resin Printing (LRP) materials. We can print structures with features as small as five microns. To put this in context, a […]

Future of Design: the Quadro RTX 4000

The Quadro RTX 4000 graphics card — the company’s first midrange professional GPU is powered by NVIDIA Turing architecture and NVIDIA RTX platform. Unveiled at the annual Autodesk University Conference in Las Vegas, the Quadro RTX 4000 puts real-time ray tracing within reach of a wider range of developers, designers and artists worldwide. Professionals from the manufacturing, architecture, engineering and media creation industries witnessed a seismic shift in computer graphics with the launch of Turing in August. The field’s greatest leap since the invention of the CUDA GPU in 2006, Turing features new RT Cores to accelerate ray tracing and next-gen Tensor Cores for AI inferencing which, together for the first time, make real-time ray tracing possible. The Quadro RTX 4000 features a power-efficient, single-slot design that fits in variety of workstation chassis. Other benefits include: ● Significant performance improvements — 8GB of ultra-fast GDDR6 graphics memory technology provides over 40 percent more memory bandwidth than the previous generation Quadro P4000. ● 36 RT Cores — enable real-time ray tracing of objects and environments with physically accurate shadows, reflections, refractions, and global illumination. ● 288 Turing Tensor Cores for 57 TFLOPS of deep learning performance — accelerate neural network training and inference, which are critical to powering AI-enhanced rendering, products and services. ● Hardware support for VirtualLink — new open industry standard meets the power, display and bandwidth demands of next-generation VR headsets through a single USB-C connector1. ● Improved performance of VR applications — new and enhanced technologies include Variable Rate Shading, Multi-View Rendering and VRWorks Audio. ● Video encode and decode engines — accelerate video creation and playback for multiple video streams with resolutions up to 8K. OEM support Leading OEMs have voiced their support for new Turing-based Quadro RTX 4000 GPUs: ● “AI and real-time ray tracing […]

Manufacturing the future: The next era of global growth and innovation

By James Manyika, Jeff Sinclair, Richard Dobbs, Gernot Strube, Louis Rassey, Jan Mischke, Jaana Remes, Charles Roxburgh, Katy George, David O’Halloran, and Sreenivas Ramaswamy. The global manufacturing sector has undergone a tumultuous decade: large developing economies leaped into the first tier of manufacturing nations, a severe recession choked off demand, and manufacturing employment fell at an accelerated rate in advanced economies. Still, manufacturing remains critically important to both the developing and the advanced world. In the former, it continues to provide a pathway from subsistence agriculture to rising incomes and living standards. In the latter, it remains a vital source of innovation and competitiveness, making outsized contributions to research and development, exports, and productivity growth. But the manufacturing sector has changed—bringing both opportunities and challenges—and neither business leaders nor policy makers can rely on old responses in the new manufacturing environment. • Manufacturing’s role is changing. The way it contributes to the economy shifts as nations mature: in today’s advanced economies, manufacturing promotes innovation, productivity, and trade more than growth and employment. In these countries, manufacturing also has begun to consume more services and to rely more heavily on them to operate. • Manufacturing is not monolithic. It is a diverse sector with five distinct groups of industries, each with specific drivers of success. • Manufacturing is entering a dynamic new phase. As a new global consuming class emerges in developing nations, and innovations spark additional demand, global manufacturers will have substantial new opportunities—but in a much more uncertain environment. Manufacturing’s role is changing Globally, manufacturing continues to grow. It now accounts for approximately 16 percent of global GDP and 14 percent of employment. But the manufacturing sector’s relative size in an economy varies with its stage of development. We find that when economies industrialize, manufacturing employment and output both […]

From the back streets of Petone to the highways of the world

Sanpro Industries Ltd Petone.They supply the world from their Petone base and the Sanderson name has become the industry standard to all the big names in the exhaust system industry. Sanpro: 100% Export; 100% Petone Sanpro Industries Ltd Managing director and Founder Malcolm Sanderson loves getting up and coming to work each day, especially when there is a new engineering challenge to be solved. “We are constantly improving and re-innovating our products,” says Malcolm. “That is our policy. Through constant testing, development and re-design we ensure we remain at the forefront of tube perforation technology.” My favourite quote is “Failure is the road to success”. If you don’t try, how do you know if you will succeed? The key to their success is being able to change direction quickly to keep up with market changes: “We focus on quality and support not price; to stay ahead of the competition and build up repeat business.” Their main customers are the five major manufacturers who make and supply parts to 95 per cent of car companies in the world – from Mercedes and Porsche to Skoda and Kia, they all have a bit of Petone in them. Starting in the late 70s making mufflers in his parent’s garage at his home, Malcolm dreamed of a better and faster way to make the exhaust baffles rather than use the conventional method of rolling and welding perforated sheet – sparking the idea for the Sanderson perforating louvering machine range. With their first machine built for a Malaysian client over 20 years ago still in operation today, they have now sold over 200 machines worldwide and export to more than 30 countries. The Sanderson range has become the industry standard to all the biggest names in the industry and they are the preferred suppliers […]

Silvent Pro-One air gun: Winner of Red Dot Award and International Design Excellence Awards

Air guns are one of the most used tools in production environments, but unfortunately, many old style and incorrectly specified air guns can create a number of workplace injuries. The Silvent Pro-One air gun is designed to improve the work environment and minimise the amount of occupational injuries when blowing with compressed air. Silvent is a world leader in air gun design. The efficient, quiet and durable Pro-One is a robust, ergonomic, hand-tool designed for professional industrial use worldwide. The air gun is fitted with a specially designed, patented nozzle in stainless steel. This allows an effective blowing force and a low noise level, with an air/cost savings of 53% and noise reduction of 69%, at the same time, delivering the correct amount of air flow to achieve optimum blowing capabilities. The nozzle creates a concentrated jet of air, which reduces turbulence, thus enabling a more targeted, effective blowing force. The Pro-One air nozzle has a lightweight, slim design. The ergonomic handle allows several different grips to make work easier and reduce the risk of repetitive strain injuries. “The unique design of the nozzle enables a reduction in sound level of more than 10 dB(A). The ear perceives this as a halve of the noise level which in turn reduces the risk of hearing damage and makes a big difference for both the operator and the surrounding people”, says Rasmus Tibell, Head of Technology at Silvent AB. Pro-One is approved by SUVA and meets OSHA’s. The award winning Silvent Pro-One air nozzle is available exclusively at Spray Nozzle Engineering.

Democratising carbon fibre

If you think about Auckland and carbon fibre technology, scenes of the America’s Cup and the industries that surround it spring to mind. Ventilation tubes in dusty Australian coal mines are probably not your first mental image. Yet this less than glamorous gear represents the start of a promising new trade, thanks to the ingenuity of Graeme Rivers, founder of North Shore-based Rivers Carbon Technologies, and a Callaghan Innovation Project Grant. All sorts have come out of Rivers Carbon’s Albany workshop – from the foils for elite America’s Cup yachts to replica chassis for E-Type Jaguars. But while money may be no object in these high-end industries, the wonders of carbon fibre are generally outside the budget of ordinary businesses. Until now. Rivers Carbon has come up with a lower cost way of making carbon fibre products for everyday sectors such as construction and mining. After months of researching cores, cloth types, resins, hardeners and trihydrate mixes, Graeme Rivers developed a ‘cold cure’ method of setting carbon fibre, rather than pressurising and cooking it in an autoclave. Rivers Carbon settled on ventilation tubing for underground mining as its first application for the new carbon fibre. Currently the fibreglass tubes used in the mines are heavy and tend to crack and break. Both factors create health and safety issues. In contrast, Rivers’ Premium High Carbon Fibre tubes are light, durable, and can be easily lifted above the shoulder making them far easier to install. The company exported its first shipment of ventilation tubing to Australia in March and has been producing consistently ever since. Staff at BHP Billiton Illawarra Coal’s West Cliff mine in New South Wales say they’ve had no injuries to people or breakages since they started using carbon fibre tubing, and the company is now looking at other […]

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