About
Today, the average age of a production plant is more than 20 years. Most factories were built and equipped before automation became truly digital: robots did pre-programmed work alone, machines acted as islands, and conveyor belts were synonym with automated processes. In the best case.
This is the reality of manufacturing today.
Challenge
In the age of speed, technology advances are exponential, but manufacturers struggle to keep pace due to high investment costs, missing internal tech skills and necessary change management when it comes to process re-engineering. In most cases, building a greenfield factory and starting from scratch seems easier to gain the necessary step forward.
Industry 4.0 promises another level of automation where machines talk to each other in order to optimize the flow of assets and the use of resources. It incorporates self-monitoring for better coordination of machines, process analysis and diagnosis of issues without the need for human intervention.
Industry 4.0 is the trend towards automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies and processes, including physical systems, the industrial internet of things, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. Machines don't replace deep expertise but are more efficient than humans in performing repetitive functions. In combination with machine learning, they can carry out complex tasks.
Given the potential of industry 4.0, it seems obvious to invest in smart production. As mentioned above, the risks of high economic costs, process adaptation and availability of advanced skills slow down investment plans.
Solution
But how about a solution that would convert industry 3.0 production lines into a smart factory without those risks?
Think of retrofitting existing assets, machines, and processes at a low investment and without the need for advanced human skills. That's exactly what successful companies do - increase productivity, reduce idle time of valuable assets and stop wasting resources with the help of automated, smart processes.
Asset Agent addresses this challenge: in order to retrofit a brownfield factory, machines and processes are made accessible and visible to digital systems. Process engineers mount smart tags and readers on machines and assets, connect their IDs with the Asset Agent application and let it communicate with the manufacturing management software. Now, the production is fully automated or supports human manual process steps, depending on the production process design.
As a result, a brownfield plant became a smart factory based on industry 4.0 standards.
