Regardless of whether it is mechanical engineering, industry or craft: To remain competitive, there is hardly a production company today that can do without the potential of digitization. With the right digitization solutions, production orders can be carried out efficiently and with a high level of transparency. The modular structure of digitization products allows them to be adapted to individual requirements.
What Does Digitization Mean In Production?
Until now, IT played a rather subordinate role in production. In most cases, the tasks were limited to administration and order processing. In the meantime, however, many entrepreneurs have recognized that digitization offers many more possibilities than that. With suitable software solutions, the processes in production can now be better deciphered. This means that they can be optimized in the first step and then fully automated.
The leisurely pace at which digitization is progressing in production is primarily due to the complexity of the machines and systems. In contrast to customer-based technologies, access to data and information in production is, in most cases, associated with a lot of effort.
However, the high development effort also requires financial investments, which many entrepreneurs still shy away from, even if they would pay off in the medium to long term. In the meantime, however, more and more modular ready-made solutions are conquering the market. This significantly reduces the implementation effort, and the investment costs remain manageable.
The Critical Question In Production: Are The Machines Working Productively?
Anyone who works as a manager in production is responsible for ensuring that the systems and machines in use work as productively as possible. Corresponding methods can provide even the best production manager with the necessary information and analyze it more precisely and quickly. Toii®.Lights, for example, offers a straightforward and quick way of doing this.
The great advantage of this tool: The dreaded complex interface developments are not required here. The digital view of the production takes place via a stacking lamp and the software. The hardware was specially developed for toii®. Lights take care of the input and output. This consists of a simple stacking lamp and the toii®.Lights-Box.
The installation of the toii®.Lights-Box only takes about one to two hours per machine and can, for example, be carried out by the company electrician. It is then possible to configure the software accordingly within a few minutes. In other words: Anyone who starts retrofitting a machine in the morning has a level of transparency with the toii® platform before lunch that they could only dream of before.
How Does Production Software Work, And What Are The Advantages?
In the case of toii®.Lights, machine running and downtimes are continuously monitored and saved. If it comes to a standstill, the machine operator can enter the reason for the deadlock at the push of a button. This is processed directly by the software and visualized accordingly in a dashboard. In this way, it is still possible to intervene in an optimizing manner during the shift.
With the corresponding module extensions, the range of functions can subsequently be expanded as required with the toii®. Integrators, for example, external MES or ERP systems, can also be connected to the platform. With the help of toii®.I think it is possible to predict the machines’ maintenance requirements and optimize the production efficiency.
In summary, a system like toii®. Lights offer the following advantages in production:
- Fault reports in real-time on any Internet browser, smartphone or tablet
- Automatic evaluation of productivity and downtimes
- Shift and location comparisons with the help of clear dashboards
- Evaluation of individual machine cycles over any period
If you still shy away from the implementation costs, you should perhaps deal a little more closely with the topic of funding.
KfW Promotes Digitization In Production
It may be possible to receive an ERP digitization and innovation loan from KfW for the digitization project in production. The following digitization measures, among others, are funded:
- Networking of ERP and production systems
- Integration of mobile operating devices in production control
- Digitization of the value chain
- Development of the infrastructure for the analysis of large amounts of data
- Development of a digital image
What Effects Does Digitization In Production Have On The World Of Work?
With every step of automation, people fear that jobs could be lost as a result. However, as in most cases, there is only a shift in activities.
In the future, a high degree of specialization will be significant. There is currently a great demand for good software developers who can convert the signals from machines into information for people. Because in principle, millions of data can be read out from every production system. However, they are only helpful if exciting details can be obtained from them.
In addition, there is a tremendous demand for agile project managers who can conceptualize the automation processes and then implement them quickly. Human work will, therefore, still play an essential role in the intelligent factory.
