Labor shortages, better connectivity drive smart factory adoption in plastics
Key Highlights
- Standardized machine connectivity is allowing plastics processors to integrate production equipment with MES and ERP systems more effectively.
- Labor shortages and COVID-19-era production pressures accelerated interest in automation, data connectivity and smart manufacturing technologies.
- Private equity investment is encouraging plastics manufacturers to automate operations and improve financial performance through technology investments.
- Lower-cost PLCs and sensors allow smaller processors to capture machine data without replacing existing plastics processing equipment.
Part of a series examining smart factory and artificial intelligence technologies available to plastics processors.
Smart factory technology is moving from discussion to wider adoption in the plastics industry, according to two experts with DELMIAWorks, a brand of Dassault Systèmes.
Increased machinery connectivity, improved data capture, labor shortages, greater availability of artificial intelligence (AI), and new investment in plastics processing operations are contributing to the growth of smart manufacturing.
Smart factory technology has been available for years, but improved connectivity among machines and between machinery and manufacturing execution system (MES) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software represents a major advancement, said Buddy Bump, DELMIAWorks product manager at Dassault Systèmes.
Equipment increasingly can send data to other systems through standard industrial communication protocols such as OPC UA (Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture) and MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport).
“The big change has been the connectivity,” Bump said. “The machine connectivity has absolutely skyrocketed.”
Until about the last five years, that type of connectivity was not standardized. Often, information was shared through proprietary communication protocols.
Sharing machine data with MES and ERP systems makes for “a much smarter factory,” he said.
‘Dreaming bigger’ with more connectivity
“Most folks start with counting production counts,” Bump said. “I think the shift has been that the start of the conversation was almost always counting parts. These days, the conversation includes a lot more complex problems. Processors are dreaming bigger.”
The connectivity of equipment is not limited to primary plastics processing machinery, added Steve Bieszczat, DELMIAWorks chief marketing officer.
“Today's equipment in injection molding, blow molding, extrusion, all of it, involves not only the primary means of production, let's call it the injection molding press, but a lot of the auxiliary equipment that goes with it — the dryers and the feeders and a lot of the instrumentation for the quality assurance. That is all made to be smart now,” Bieszczat said. “It's made to be interconnected today.”
Standardized connectivity not only makes it easier for end users to program and connect devices, but it also provides a level of security that might have been missing from the previous operational technology, Bieszczat said.
Smart factory technology today extends well beyond communicating with robots and automation on the factory floor. The concept now encompasses the entire manufacturing operation, from planning and material requirements through production, product quality, warehousing and shipping.
“It reaches to what we call the front office, all the way through the shop floor and down to the loading dock,” Bieszczat said.
Connecting factory-floor data with broader business systems helps manufacturers make better business decisions. Better information can reduce unnecessary inventory, labor, bad parts and finished goods sitting in warehouses, Bieszczat said.
Effects of pandemic, private equity
The COVID-19 pandemic made evident the need for manufacturers to operate with greater precision, as they had to work with fewer workers and meet demands for faster turnaround times. Those pressures encouraged manufacturers to look more closely at automation and smart-factory technologies.
“We’ve seen a real acceleration in the adoption of what you might call smart manufacturing or turnkey manufacturing since COVID threw a monkey wrench into the whole process,” Bieszczat said.
Another significant driver of smart factory and AI adoption has been consolidation and private-equity investment in plastics manufacturing.
Historically, many plastics processing companies were run by owner-operators who were concerned about making investments into smart factory and AI technology. Today, many of those businesses are being run by professional managers and backed by investors who have injected new capital into the companies with the goal of improving financial performance.
“You’ve got a financial investor saying, ‘I want you to invest in this business. I want you to automate this business, and I want you to make this business worth more money as an asset, a financial asset,’” Bieszczat said. “That’s also pushing the smart factory stuff forward.”
Smart technology is more accessible to all
Smaller plastics processors also have opportunities to participate in smart manufacturing without replacing existing processing equipment.
Bump said he believes manufacturing is in a “golden age” for capturing data. It’s made possible in part by inexpensive PLCs (programmable logic controllers) featuring modern, standardized communications protocols that can be installed on existing equipment. Paired with sensors, these PLCs can communicate data necessary for smart factory applications.
Bump said a processor today can purchase an Arduino Opta PLC, which can communicate data through MQTT, off Amazon for only about $300. That low price tag would have been difficult to imagine only a few years ago.
DELMIAWorks offers complete ERP and MES software designed for mid-sized plastics processors.
"We offer a complete ERP system with all of the accounting, material resource planning, scheduling, the work order creation, all the way to shipping," Bieszczat said.
"We offer a complete package of MES on the production monitoring side with cycle counting and production speed, as well as on the process monitoring side, which is more of your temperatures and pressures and those types of process variables."
The MES includes a "quality assurance mechanism" that ensures inspections are conducted at proper intervals. It tracks the automatic shipment of finished goods and can make suggestions for improvements to your operation, Bieszczat said.
Parent company Dassault Systèmes has an AI product called Aura that is being "interwoven" into the DELMIAWorks MES and ERP products, he said. In the manufacturing environment, AI is not only useful for simplifying administrative tasks but can be exceptionally powerful in analytic and discovery tasks.
Contact:
DELMIAWorks, Dassault Systèmes, Waltham, Mass., 800-693-9000, www.DELMIAWorks.com
About the Author
Bruce Geiselman
Lead Reporter
Senior Reporter Bruce Geiselman covers plastics processing technologies and end markets including automotive and packaging. He also writes features, including In Other Words and Problem Solved, for Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing and The Journal of Blow Molding. He has decades of experience in daily and magazine journalism, including eight years at PMM, and is the recipient of a Jesse H. Neal Award, among other recognitions.