Smart Manufacturing Today

Charlie Camphin, WorkForce Software Vice President of Sales, APJ Employee productivity, or how effectively employee time is managed, is key to ensuring a business can execute its overall strategy. In the competitive manufacturing industry, a sustained increase in employee productivity can give the business a competitive advantage. Manufacturing businesses that implement workforce management technology can achieve a significant increase in employee productivity and improvement in their bottom line. Manufacturers are often at the forefront of automation technology. However, many still rely on old-fashioned time sheets and scheduling systems that require manual input from both the business and its employees. Automating workforce management systems can help to improve communication and save time and resources that could be better spent on strategic priorities. Automation technology lets companies minimise the costs of processes such as absence management. Automated absence tracking, for example, can reduce the time HR managers spend on manual absence-related tasks. Top-performing organisations are increasingly integrating automated absence management tools to relieve managers of the burdens of handling short- and long-term employee absences. There are three key ways that manufacturing businesses can enable employee productivity through technology: Improving engagement and satisfaction Boosting employee engagement has a direct impact on productivity. However, almost half (49.5 per cent) of employees are not engaged and 16.5 per cent are actively disengaged.[1] Workforce management technology can give employees self-service tools for tracking time-off balances and requesting leave. This means they have greater control and insight over their own shifts and holiday time, helping to create an engaged, productive and loyal workforce. Analyse performance Information on employees’ activities and performance is essential to how well a business can harness its true value. The data provided by workforce management systems can provide greater insight than traditional methods of worker observation. Manufacturing businesses with robust workforce analytics and […]

Danushka Bollegala Senior Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool Losing jobs to technology is nothing new. Since the industrial revolution, roles that were once exclusively performed by humans have been slowly but steadily replaced by some form of automated machinery. Even in cases where the human worker is not completely replaced by a machine, humans have learnt to rely on a battery of machinery to be more efficient and accurate. A report from the Oxford Martin School’s Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology said that 47% of all jobs in the US are likely to be replaced by automated systems. Among the jobs soon to be replaced by machines are real estate brokers, animal breeders, tax advisers, data entry workers, receptionists, and various personal assistants. But you won’t need to pack up your desk and hand over to a computer just yet, and in fact jobs that require a certain level of social intelligence and creativity such as in education, healthcare, the arts and media are likely to remain in demand from humans, because such tasks remain difficult to be computerised. Like it or not, we now live in an era dominated by artificial intelligence(AI). AI can be seen as a collection of technologies that can be used to imitate or even to outperform tasks performed by humans using machines. We might not first see it but we cannot avoid running into one or more systems that use some form of an AI algorithm in our day-to-day activities – such as searching for some information using Google, purchasing a recommended product on Amazon, or recognising faces in an image uploaded to Facebook. Deep learning Recent breakthroughs in AI are largely attributable to a technique called deep learning. Often known as machine learning or neural networking, deep learning involves “training” a computer […]

To be sustainable a business needs to be dynamic and continually evolve.  It needs to innovate developing new product service offerings that can be taken to market.  Long term contracts where a business relies on a small number of high value customers are fine.  However, the impact of losing one or more of these key accounts is potentially catastrophic, particularly if the loss accounts for a significant proportion of a company’s revenue. Last year Nautech Electronics experienced such a scenario first hand. After 20 years of designing, developing and installing emergency lighting, power management and associated equipment in to New Zealand Police vehicles.  The contract was lost and with it a substantial proportion of the company’s business. In many instances, such an event may have resulted in the loss of the entire business.  However, after the dust settled it proved to be the point that Nautech Electronics transformed from being a product centric traditional manufacturing business into a lean, agile marketing led, Solutions provider building electronic and electromechanical sub-assemblies for some of New Zealand’s leading technology based exporters. Today assemblies manufactured by Nautech can be found in OEM products sold around the world. In business for over 25 years Nautech has always operated within a number of distinct market segments.  Specialist vehicles, contract manufacturing and more recently race track control systems. With the loss of the police contract came the realisation that there was no other specialist vehicle fleet business anywhere else in NZ that came close in either fleet size or installation value. This meant that in order to survive and prosper the business needed to re-focus and change. Following a comprehensive review of the business and its market segments a strategic decision was taken to focus on developing and expanding its contract manufacturing division. With small but established […]

-Bill McMurray, Managing Director, Asia Pacific and Japan, Qualtrics  The rapid evolution of technologies such as mobility, data analytics, and cloud computing, is changing the way organisations gain insight into their markets. This technology is making it easier for manufacturers to accelerate business decisions through insight gained from market research platforms. Of all the new technology making market research faster and more effective, mobility is one of the most important. Thanks to mobility, manufacturers researching their markets and products now have easier access to more detailed market feedback. With more than half of the New Zealand public now claiming access to the internet via smartphones, according to Nielsen’s 2015 New Zealand Multi-Screen report, mobile technology can give manufacturers a broad scope for connecting with consumers. The saturation of mobile devices also provides a useful mechanism to collect data in real-time with visual images and other multi-media content. This lets manufacturers monitor behaviour as it occurs, providing the opportunity to test or adapt products and services, marketing, and strategies instantly. Mobility, social media, and website intercepts provide increasingly-flexible platforms to find the right engagement methodology. Qualtrics recommends manufacturers consider six key elements of effective market research: Defined objectives Defining objectives is the first step to determining what the business wants to get out of the research, which questions to ask, and who should be involved in the process. If businesses don’t take time to work out their objectives, they may waste valuable resources without gaining any improvements. Include necessary definitions Not everybody understands certain titles and terms in the same way. To ensure all customers are on the same page and the results are accurate, businesses should include definitions at the beginning of the research survey, or attached to individual questions, depending on the layout of the survey. Make surveys easily […]

– Dieter Adam, CEO of the NZMEA The next wave of technological developments, described as Industry 4.0, have the potential to substantially change the nature of manufacturing, around the world and in New Zealand. Though its future and realities are uncertain, it could represent huge opportunities for those who can leverage technology, and risks if we cannot keep up. Take networked manufacturing. At the core of this is the idea that the physical elements on the factory floor – machines, tools, transportation systems and products are all networked; they can send data to a central control point and to each other and receive instructions from a central control point and from each other. Centralised monitoring and control of production equipment is not new – the interconnectivity of all elements and the potential to process and learn from large amounts of data, however, is new. This technology could give manufacturers the ability to monitor and record the performance of pretty much any tool or machinery on a production line in terms of each individual action. Beyond the immediate quality control, this will allow far-reaching retrospective analyses of potential mechanical failure when the cause of a vehicle accident is investigated, for example. Other uses could include fully autonomous local logistics, self-managing the flow of materials through a process line and factory, or physically attaching further-processing instructions to semi-finished products on a line (via RFID) to allow automatic variations within the production process. It will provide more flexibility to use input from other parties to define customisation without having to manually change tools or adjust production lines. At the macro level (systems level), Big Data systems will allow the analysis of ever more complex sets of data to identify and predict the occurrence of (rare) events. One of the most potent Big Data […]