Lights Out Moulding: Covid-19 Crisis as Stress Test for Industry 4.0

Last year in my blog post about the second wave of digitalization, I discussed the entering of Artificial Intelligence (AI), platform-based business models („platform economies“) and mobility solutions into plastics companies and their value chains. Back in 2015, I also presented in one of my posts the concept of Cyber Physical Production Systems (CPPS) and Industrial Internet of Things (IoT). In the meanwhile, companies have picked up one or the other concept and started to digitalize their operations. The “holy grail” of CPPS is a complete autonomous production, which is also referred to as lights-out manufacturing. In this concept, companies can easier set up their production facilities anywhere in the world closer to the end customer.

A recent example of lights out manufacturing is the Michigan based moulder company, Grand Traverse Plastics Corp, which focuses on engine and rocker covers, oil fill tube caps and assemblies, and engine and transmission parts. Grand Traverse Plastics Corp has recently invested 1.5 million USD to get their injection moulding facility into lights-out manufacturing. Among the investments were fully electric moulding machines and several five- and six-axis robots. Furthermore, automated material handling and box conveyor systems were planned for installation as well. In this production scenario, few tasks are still left for manual labor, i.e. the boxes with the moulded parts need to be moved into shipping and a quality performance employee needs to check part samples using an offline optical inspection system.

What about tool makers?

Injection moulding tools play a key role in the lights out moulding. Mould monitoring is a key element in a digitalization strategy. The company Digital Mould GmbH from Austria developed such a monitoring system, which was presented last year at the K fair in Germany. Tool making itself is not yet a lights out manufacturing, however big steps are also done in this area. Tool design and simulations can already be done remotely. I expect simple tools to be done fully automatically soon as well.

In the current pandemic situation, companies experience a dramatic reduction of purchase orders on one hand, but also an impactful reduction of their production capabilities due to a reduction of the manpower availability, i.e. less people permitted at the shop floor simultaneously so that safety regulations can be fulfilled as well as many employees laid off for being considered “at high risk” if infected. In the current scenario, companies relying on lights out manufacturing concepts can better ensure the supply of parts due to their higher level of automation. Also, in a normal scenario, the lights-out manufacturing installation allows companies to grow their business due to productivity gains.

Our economy will recover – when and how long it will take remains an open question. Digitalization of the plastics industry will be even more necessary after such significant events.
Thank you for reading!
Till next time, Herwig

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Literature:
1. https://www.plasticsnews.com/news/michigan-molder-invests-lights-out-production-seeks-expansion?utm_source=pn-automotive-report&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20200316&utm_content=article3-headline
2. https://www.k-zeitung.de/joint-venture-von-haidlmair-und-hofmann/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign&utm_content=Haidlmair

European (Plastics) Industry and its struggle with Industry 4.0

Most companies created in Silicon Valley in the last 20 years offer disruptive software solutions which elevated the digital platform business models a lot. We all know Amazon, Uber, and Google, because they added value to our lives by making things easier, faster and cheaper. These use mainly network effects.

Europe was in a deep sleep regarding digitalization developments in the past 20 years. The good news is that Europe still has a chance in the second half of the digitalization game. There is a strong physical based company foundation in Europe and now it’s time to connect software solutions with physical machines by using the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Machine-to-machine technologies and sensors are already available but its integration and operation over a cloud based IIoT is new. This will enable operational efficiency and will allow companies to re-industrialize/re-invent certain areas and, as a result, get a better perception of the customer needs. Consequently, IIoT will play a key role in the landing of (Plastics) Industry 4.0 in Europe.

Gilchrist et al. [1] concluded that to obtain significant gains, the IIoT just needs to bring 1% savings in cost/inefficiency.

Here are some examples:

• Aviation: fuel savings of 1% per annum brings savings of $30 billion.
• Gas-fired generators: fuel savings of 1% brings operational savings of $66 billion.
• Oil and Gas industry: reduction of 1% in capital spending on equipment per annum would return around $90 billion.
• Agriculture, transportation, and health care industries: here the same 1% rule holds true.

IT systems have matured over the past years and impart now confidence in senior business leaders to move toward the digital transformation.  This can already be seen in a global context where countries such as USA, China and India hold a leading position [2]. What about Europe?

In the past years, the EU has developed into a more regulated environment which is not unleashing for entrepreneurial spirits. This can be noticed in the amount of laws and other regulations which have been implemented. Thoskov [3] presented a study entitled “55 years of European Legislation”. According to the latter, since its foundation in 1957 in Rome, the EU adopted more than 100,000 legislative acts.   These days, on average, 80 directives, 1200 regulations and 700 decisions per year are approved by the EU. As a result, small and middle companies can be easily delayed and held back by the amount of regulation. This environment is neither friendly to the creation of new businesses nor to the widespread of existing ones in a digital world.

Overall, the European mindset needs a change! In my opinion, a new view on the long-lasting archaic concepts of education, work and lifestyle is needed. Following, we discuss each of these topics:

• Education: Generally, to the majority of the EU it can be said that the education system got stuck in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. The way we teach and the content of what we teach becomes more and more outdated as digitalization progresses, i.e. a lot of content currently thought in schools can be at any time accessed through our phones.  This may mean that the nowadays children despite being digital natives and able to handle all digital technologies, will not be equipped with the necessary skills or mindset to tackle the future.
  In Education 4.0, new online education models will challenge given systems. Analytical thinking, connecting the dots of industrial issues, discussing in a cross-functional and global way needs to be stronger than ever in our toolbox. Simple things will be solved by virtual assistants, aka computers. Dueck [4] explains that you will only get well paid for things that the computer cannot do. This leads me to work 4.0.
• Work: The 40 hour workweek is still the status quo, together with semi-home office solution. The 9-to-5 social agreement was once decided as the best solution for industry, and thus, most governments build their social systems on this basis. Despite all current working processes being more and more optimized, which means that we can do more in less time, we still fill up the bottle to 40 hours! 
  Jason Fried [5] gave a good Ted talk on the topic “Why work doesn’t happen at work”. When people start operating from everywhere at every time, the current management system creeps to its border of use. Work 4.0 says goodbye to the classic known time registration systems and really focus on delivering. Dueck [4] concluded that all administrative things will disappear. Consequently, people can really focus on the job itself and the task density will increase. As a result, people will really need to perform and the work pressure will be even higher.
  Solutions to standard businesses problems and generally business topics can be more and more found by individual Internet searches, and, thus, digital businesses will require a higher contribution of professionals with specialized knowledge. Low specialization jobs, which require short training to be up to the job task, will still exist but will be competitive and volatile. To sum up from a human resources point of view, Work 4.0 will focus rather on specialty than simplicity, e.g. cake designer or creator versus cake maker.

• Life: Industry 4.0 or from a worldwide perspective the IIoT will enable the establishment of fully automated online businesses. This will result in additional personal time. Time   together with flexibility to travel and try out things you really want to do, but could not yet do will be the new currency.  This may also give you the opportunity to make several “mini-retirements” instead of traditionally waiting until retirement. Such concepts are presented and shaped by Tim Ferris in his book the 4-hour workweek [6].

Last but not least, we must be accepting of the increasing diversity of our societies in a globalized economy! I am optimistic about the upcoming changes and there will be up and downs which we will have to tackle through, but in the long run digitalization will increase the wealth of the worldwide societies, not only Europe! We need worldwide growth in wealth!

I invite you all for having a look at my Digital PlasticsRevolution series, which presents different “impactors” full with ideas on how to tackle successful digitalization in Plastics Industry. Impactor 1 of the series presents to you 5 ideas to get your digital plastics revolution started.

Thanks for reading!

Till next time and #findoutaboutplastics

Herwig

Literature:

[1] Alasdair Gilchrist: Industry 4.0: The Industrial Internet of Things, Apress. 2016

[2] Keith Breene, World Economic Forum: The10 countries best prepared for the new digital economy

[3] Dimiter Toshkov: 55 years of EU Legislation  

[4] Gunther Dueck: Industrie 4.0 digitale Revolution eindrucksvoll erklärt - GunterDueck 2016,

[5] Jason Fried: Why work doesn’t happenat work,

[6] Tim Ferris: The 4-hour work week

Cyber physical production systems (CPPS) in plastics industry - Part II: How injection moulding machine manufacturer will change polymer processing

Welcome to the second part of this series about Cyber Physical Production Systems (CPPS) in plastics industry. (Here is link to part I). In this part, we will have a detailed look on how parts will be produced by the injection moulding technique in the future using CPPS applications. I would like to present to you the point of views of the major injection moulding machine manufacturers regarding future developments. These will have a major influence on, whether the CPPS will be a successful story in the future, or not.

Arburg: The concept of Arburg is based on the individualization of plastic parts in a large production series. This can be made by combining additive manufacturing with the injection moulding technique in a digitally networked process chain. In the opinion of Arburg, Industry 4.0 consists in an individual solution integrated in mass production.  For example, Arburg presented at the Hannover Fair 2015 (Germany) the production of a “rocker-type light switch”. This is a mass produced part by injection moulding. However, it can combine an individualization step by using the Arburg’s Freeformer. For example, the customer can “paint” his/her signature in a digital terminal (e.g: tablet).This information is stored on a chip card, which is later placed in the controlling unit of the injection moulding machine, where part of the information is converted by laser  into a data matrix code on the backside of the produced light switch. Then, the light switch is placed into the Freeformer (additive manufacturing unit), where the information from the chip card is again read and the signature printed on the surface of the light switch. After this process, an automated quality check is done and the light switch is packed. In parallel, a homepage with all the relevant production information is set up enabling worldwide accessibility. The following youtube-video helps understanding it better.

ENGEL’s injection 4.0 approach aims at reaching optimal efficiency, productivity, availability, quality, and flexibility on the production site. Injection 4.0 has basically 3 core elements: smart machines (focus on self-adapting, decentralized systems), smart production (horizontal and vertical data integration) and smart services (focus on remote maintenance tools). How those three work along each other was shown at the FAKUMA 2015 (Germany). Apart of that, injection moulding machines can be equipped with the iQ (intelligent Quality)-weight control as well as with the iQ-clamp control. The iQ-weight control enables a response to viscosity changes during processing. Every final part will have consistency in weight through the right timed switch over from the injection pressure to the packing pressure. The iQ-clamp control estimates the mould breathing and applies the necessary amount of clamping force. This allows keeping the mould breathing constant although process conditions might change.

Prof. Helmar Franz from Haitian pointed out at the 2^nd International Injection Moulding Conference 2015(Germany) that the future challenges are in the integration of injection moulding techniques into other technologies such as thermoforming, die casting, and additive manufacturing, as well as to integrate other conversion techniques into the injection moulding technique. Apart of that, future challenge lies in using the, as he calls it “big data meet machinery”, which can result in the development of new business models.

Krauss Maffei continuous its way towards Industry 4.0 with the Adaptive Process Control (APC), which facilitates quality control by analyzing material induced interferences over a viscosity number. As a consequence, underfilling and overfilling processes are minimized. The change-over point will be estimated for each shot ensuring that switch-over follows at the right time. We still tend to have a constant process replication, which is from a quality point of view not efficient enough to resolve influences of material and external manufacturing conditions.

Sumitomo Heavy Industries is known for all-electric injection moulding machines. They put their future outlook in improving the “Zero Molding”, which was implemented in 2008. The idea of “Zero Molding” together with its functions Flow Front Control (FFC), Minimum Clamping Mold (MCM), and Simple Process Setting (SPS) is to enable an optimal production of plastic parts with minimum defects, faults, and losses. The future zero failure technology, which meets also the idea of CPPS will contain a web based dialog between production sites, local affiliates, and SHI Demag. Furthermore, Sumitomo will also provide platforms for data storage, informatics visualization, and diagnostic processing.

Let’s jump to the last but not least manufacturer: Wittman-Battenfeld: “Wittmann 4.0” is called their main key stone in realizing an overall integration. The new B6^p controlling unit of the injection moulding machine allows to connect and control all attached robotics and periphery devices in one uniform windows surface. This allows an optimal organization of the whole production process, starting from material supply to automation process. The data is collected and stored in the central mould database. In case the mould is changed to other machines, the central computer will provide the devices with the right data. Another learning effect is reached by storing all production errors and make them accessible. Summing it up: Battenfeld believes that together with the Internet of things approach, the injection moulding machines will start communicating, “talking” more to the peripheral equipment allowing to increase productivity.

To sum up: there are already similarities in the approaches of all the manufactures, especially when it comes to control occurring process instabilities caused by material or external influences (ENGEL’s iQ weight control; Kraus Maffei’s Adaptive Process Control or Sumitomo’s Zero Moulidng strategy). Furthermore, allover production strategies, where the injection moulding machine is not just a well-connected piece within the production, have entered the prototype phase. Fact is that we still plan our products in a linear way but the world around us changes in an exponential way. CPPS might helping combating a more exponential way of thinking in the world of plastics manufacturing. I believe that in the next five years fully integrated CPPS will be state of the art in plastics industry.

Share this knowledge with your friends!

Greetings,

Herwig

Literature:

[1] Proceedings 2nd IIMC, IKV Aachen

[2] Kunstoffe, 9/2015, p.103

[3] Kunstoffe, 9/2015, p.32 - 40