8/2/2019 ATAP36 Smart Manufacturing

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/atap36-smart-manufacturing 1/2

12  April 2011  AUTOMATION TODAY ASIA PACIFIC

In Gujarat, India, Tata Motors Ltd.

built a US$417 million factory with

several advanced manufacturing

attributes to manufacture its market-

changing Tata Nano, the world’s

least expensive car, selling at under

US$3,000 in India. The company has

announced plans to release versions of 

the Nano at market-disruptive prices

throughout the world.

The factory in India was designed

to incorporate “smart” manufacturing

technologies at every turn, enabling

the company to accept custom orders

from dealers and adapt – on the spot –

to customers’ preferences. Those same

technologies will allow the company

to track every part to its source,

quickly identifying and addressing any

quality or safety problems that could

arise. Additionally, when smart grids

become available, the factory will be

ready to connect to them to optimise

  production to times that energy is

most plentiful or least expensive.

Tata Motors is one of a growing number

of companies that is changing the way it

conducts business and competes in the

competitive global marketplace. It is

striving to harness smart manufacturing

technology to energise innovation,

address cost and structural challenges,

achieve environmental sustainability

goals and drive competitive advantage.

Defining Smart ManufacturingSmart manufacturing focuses on

dramatic advances in integrating

information, technology and human

ingenuity, explains Rockwell

 Automation Chief Technology Officer

Sujeet Chand. The concept is evolving

rapidly as companies seek ever-more

sophisticated ways to develop and

apply manufacturing intelligence –

real-time data sensing and collection,

high-performance computer analysis,

and advanced modeling and simulation –to every stage of manufacturing, from

  product invention through design,

sourcing, production and delivery.

Most industry leaders and observers

agree that the crucial components of 

smart manufacturing include a highly

skilled, adaptable workforce; extensive

collection, sharing and analysis of 

information across the entire project

life cycle; and powerful computer

analytics utilising contemporary high-

 performance computing technology.

With smart manufacturing,

industries will cut the average cost

of manufacturing in key sectors and

ramp up exports. They will also gain

time-to-market flexibility as smart

manufacturing profoundly alters production time lines.

 Three Phases of EvolutionChand notes that smart

manufacturing will evolve in three

  phases. In its first phase, smart

manufacturing will interconnect and

better harmonise individual stages of 

manufacturing production to advance

 plant-wide efficiency.

  A typical manufacturing plant uses

information technology, sensors, motors/ 

actuators, computerised controls,  production management software and

the like to manage each specific stage or

operation of a manufacturing process.

However, each is an island of efficiency.

Smart manufacturing will integrate

these islands, enabling data sharing

throughout the plant. The convergence

between machine-gathered data and

human intelligence will advance plant-

wide optimisation and enterprise-wide

management objectives, including

substantial increases in economic

  performance, worker safety and

environmental sustainability. The

emergence of this “manufacturing

intelligence” will usher in the second

 phase of smart manufacturing.

This second phase involvesconnecting in-plant modeling and data

technologies with high-performance

computing platforms, which will make

it possible to build significantly higher

levels of manufacturing intelligence

and connect it throughout the

factory. Complete production lines

and entire plants will run with real-

time flexibility – which is not feasible

now – in order to conserve energy and

otpmise outputs.

Businesses will be able to develop

advanced models and simulations of manufacturing processes to improve

current and future operations. For

instance, companies will be able

Companies that adopt smart manufacturing will earn global, long-term competitive advantages.

Getting on the Path to

Smart Manufacturing

  S u s  t a

  i n a  b  l e

 

  P r o d u

 c  t  i o n

noitazimitp

O

ediwt

nalP

EnterpriseBusinessSystems

OEMMachine Builders

DistributionCenter

Consumers

Suppliers

n

 

EntB

uppliers

SmartGrid

Factory

D  e m a n d  - d  r  i  v  e n  

S  u  p  p l   y   C  h a i  n s 

8/2/2019 ATAP36 Smart Manufacturing

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/atap36-smart-manufacturing 2/2

 AUTOMATION TODAY ASIA PACIFIC  April 2011 13

to develop models for the mass-

manufacture of products and devices that

use “nanotechnology,” the development

of ultra-miniaturised, highly complex

devices, systems and materials.

Nanotechnology is widely expected torevolutionise technology and industry

with smaller, stronger, lighter weight

materials and powerful precision

devices for nearly every industry.

The second phase of smart

manufacturing also will connect

factory-specific information to data

throughout the supply chain, from raw

material availability and customer

demand through the delivery of 

finished goods. It will facilitate the

use of smart grids to schedule energy-

intensive activities during low-demand periods and slow production

during peak energy demands. It will

enable greater product customisation,

new product simulations and new,

more efficient processes. It will

support the production of safer

 products and precisely defined, faster

 product tracking.

  As manufacturing intelligence

grows, smart manufacturing, in this

third phase, will inspire innovations

in processes and products that result

in major market disruptions, such as

a US$3,000 automobile or a US$300

 personal computer. It will reverse the

flow of established industrial supply

chains that forced consumers to accept

whatever was mass-produced.

Instead, flexible factories and

demand-driven supply chains will

change manufacturing processes

to allow companies to customise

 products to individual needs, such as

medications with specific dosages and

formulations. Customers will “tell”a factory what car to manufacture,

what features to build into a personal

computer or how to tailor a pair of 

 jeans for a perfect fit.

This most dramatic, and competitively

  vital, third phase of implementing

smart manufacturing will come from

innovation spurred by this growing

body of manufacturing knowledge.

Companies will not see incremental or

gradual changes: they will see game-

changing, market-disruptive innovations

in products and processes. Changes atthis phase will push down prices, open

new markets and offer a broader array

of choices to a wider range of people.

 The Benefits ofSmart Manufacturing

Consumers will reap several

tangible benefits from smart

manufacturing as it delivers

innovations in products, informationand design to the marketplace.

Detailed materials tracking at every

stage – made possible by standards

that link information throughout

the supply chain – will increase the

 precision of product safety monitoring

and will reduce incident responses

from months to minutes.

That same tracking, from raw

materials to delivered goods, will

hand consumers vast power in making

 point-of-purchase customisation of 

  products as well as detailedassessments of the environmental

footprint of their choices. It will

also automate regulatory and other

government reporting, increasing the

level of detail provided in reports while 

reducing taxpayer-funded costs of 

manual tracking and data collection.

Manufacturing intelligence

combined with advanced modeling

and simulation will enable inventors,

engineers, plant managers and

operators to collaborate in designing

and manufacturing new products,

especially those featuring clean

energy, low carbon footprints and

new technology. This level of progress

will enable the precise models needed

for the manufacture of products and

devices that use nanotechnology –

which will have even more profoundeffects on every aspect of our lives

than did the invention of microchips

and microprocessors.

In addition, the knowledge businesses

gain through process innovations

will transfer far beyond the doors of 

manufacturing into the services sector

at every level, delivering better pricing

through improved process efficiency

and economies of scale. That knowledge

transfer will, in turn, yield broader use

of smart manufacturing technology –

the application of new technology and

new information to disparate fields.

Smart manufacturing will reshape

industry at the most fundamental

levels, explains Chand. Its promise

far exceeds the incremental and

limited, albeit important, advances in

operational management and waste

reduction that industries captured

through “lean” initiatives in past

decades. Within the next decade,

smart manufacturing will transform

the entire manufacturing process,

from invention and raw materials to

delivery and sales.  AT

Tata Motors Ltd. incorporated smart manufacturing technologies in the production of 

the Tata Nano, the world’s least expensive car.

    S   o   u   r   c   e   :   T   a   t   a   M   o   t   o   r   s   L   t   d .