Once individual devices, production lines, plants and enterprises have been optimized, it’s time to look further up and down applicable service and supply chains, as well as into the future and the past to extend those initial gains—and then reexamine the present and future once more.
Just as the quest for industrial autonomy requires technical innovations, systems approaches and domain expertise, the same tools can be used to identify inefficiencies and potential improvements among wider-radius relationships and over longer time periods.
“End-to-end performance in plants is built on high-performance, smart, connected machines arranged into a unified system,” said Tessa Myers, intelligent devices SVP at Rockwell Automation, in her keynote presentation at the company’s Automation Fair 2024 event in Anaheim, Calif. “This group coordinates its equipment and systems, executes across entire production cycles, and can be deployed for faster time to value. And, with some help from production logistics tools, they can also reduce costs across supply chains.”
Gathering options from a friend
Any useful tool, from robots to logistics software, can be drafted to participate in an optimization group or ecosystem. However, because no one can be an expert in all the potential options for end-to-end optimization, it can be difficult to select the right pieces and assemble an effective team. Myers reported that a trusted partner like Rockwell with numerous, well-organized experts in many disciplines is the best way to find, call forth, and assemble the most suitable combination of players.
“Rockwell is the only company that has got all these alternatives and can reimagine how they’ll move through a customer’s unique processes and production lines, work with each other to produce products, and determine the costs, quality, safety and other benefits of one approach and design compared to another,” explained Myers. “This assistance empowers users and teams to make the decisions they need to achieve the operating performance they’re seeking.”
Myers reported there are three focus areas where end-to-end optimization can accomplish the best results, namely planning, execution and process optimization.
Planning and scheduling
Myers reported that planning, forecasting and scheduling are complex because users can be faced with many unpredictable situations, such as supply chain volatility, which make it hard to plan. “If users don’t get the right data at the right time, forecasting can be very difficult,” explained Myers. “Consequently, Rockwell provides many of them with tools like Plex software that gives them necessary data and allows supply chain planning in one package. This enables their forecasts to be more accurate.”
Plex’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) and manufacturing execution system (MES) software enables supply chain monitoring and planning, while its finite scheduling software enables current accurate planning, production and personnel schedules. Rockwell is in the process of adding artificial intelligence (AI) to Plex, so it can bring many additional data points together, and tackle larger planning projects.
“AI will allow Plex to add market trends to its forecasts, so users can be more certain about the right activities to focus on, and make better predictions and decisions that will give them more genuine benefits,” added Myers. “We estimated using better planning tools can decrease required inventories by 20%, while boosting throughput but more than 100%.”
Execute performance
Once plans are complete, carrying them out can begin, reducing costs and improving performance and outcomes. However, available workforces remain highly constrained, and users continue to move items through production processes that are still highly manual. “Recent research by Deloitte indicates that 3.8 million U.S. manufacturing jobs will go unfilled during the next few years, so companies need to prioritize and deploy staffers where they generate the highest value,” said Myers.
“It will also be important to implement advanced moving technologies for their raw materials and products, and add mobile and autonomous guided vehicles (AGV) and other robots to increase efficiency,” Myers said. “Using production logistics like this can generate real results, such as reducing downtime by 25% and increasing throughput by 13%.”
Process optimize
Of course, after some of these optimized processes have been running for a while, they’ll also produce their own empirical data that can be contextualized to further improve operations. Rockwell software tools within its FactoryTalk Hub that can assist these efforts include:
- FactoryTalk Data Mosaix information platform;
- FactoryTalk Optix edge platform and applications;
- DataReady control and visualization hardware devices; and,
- DataReady intelligence field devices.
“Our challenge was how to build onto Mosaix to speed up time to value from a wider variety of data sources, and this is how we’re doing it. For instance, our FactoryTalk Energy Manager software sits on top of Mosaix to simplify and enable data-driven productivity and sustainability by aggregating data for easier monitoring and tracking,” explained Myers. “This gives users more detailed visibility into their energy use, identifies new opportunities for reducing consumption, and aligns efficiencies that can yield sustainability, too.”
Despite the recent emergence of goals like sustainability and digitalization, Myers added the final piece of this end-to-end optimization puzzle is returning to the basics of quality. These efforts can be aided by Plex Quality Management System (QMS), which renders data from other FactoryTalk tools into clear and concise quality metrics.
For example, she reported that U.K.-based Prometeon Tyre Group recently lacked visibility into its quality processes, so it implemented FactoryTalk Production Center and Plex QMS, which let the manufacturer view and manage its quality opportunities more closely, better coordinate its decisions and workforce, and reduce scrap.
“The changes and challenges of end-to-end optimization are continuous, so our responses and new capabilities must be developed equally rapidly,” concludes Myers. “We’ve got the tools for optimizing operations, and when they’re integrated, it’s possible to drive efficiency and productivity.”
