India likely to witness digital leapfrogging

June 30, 2017 4:18 pm

India can go bold with a 360-degree digital approach to ensure a truly differentiating customer experience.

Michael Berger, Managing Director, Dürr India Pvt Ltd

The digitisation of processes, factories, machines and systems is rapidly gaining importance. Dürr is positioned well and claims to be one of the leading companies for digitisation in the field of machinery and plant engineering, said Michael Berger, Managing Director, Dürr India. He also delves into technology leapfrog in Industry 4.0.

Digitisation – the most important innovation trend for Dürr
The term digital@Dürr for all its developments underlines that digitisation is currently the most important innovation trend for Dürr. The company defines it as the usage of smart products, the digital networking of production facilities and the automatic system optimisation based on big-data analysis of extensive production data, now being collected everywhere, but still not being sufficiently used.

An important step with regard to Industry 4.0 was the takeover of the software specialist iTAC over a year ago. iTAC is a leading provider in the area of IoT platforms. Together, we established a platform called iTAC.IoT.Suite, whose modern architecture is the basis for upcoming big data projects and cloud applications in all production facilities from press, to body, paint and final assembly shops or even beyond. It means, Dürr merges excellent IT and plant building expertise. To control and evaluate production processes digitally on the basis of real-time data (big data), Dürr AG and Software AG have entered into a strategic partnership to develop new Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 solutions. The basis of this platform is provided by a jointly developed open IoT framework that defines the necessary capabilities and integration interfaces.

Preparing to digitise manufacturing
For automotive production facilities, there is a varying range of preparedness everywhere. It depends on the age and technical level of the existing plant. Many car makers in India have excellent plants and can start right away with Industry 4.0. But – like everywhere in the world – there are older plants existing, too. And here or elsewhere, these manufacturers have to set up a solid mechanical and electrical basis first with state-of-the-art layouts, processes and products, which then can be followed by the known Industry 2.0 or 3.0 developments. After that Industry 4.0 solutions can be implemented and be beneficial. Of course there is some overlapping possible, but certain standards have to be reached before. India is likely to witness digital leapfrogging as the thirst about innovation and digitisation with latest generation is quite high. India can go bold with a 360-degree digital approach to ensure a truly differentiating customer experience. It is for sure that digitisation is more than halfway done in 2020 in India.

Dürr products designed for ‘smart factory’
The iTAC.IOT.Suite for all production facilities is already a new development. But intelligent production control is developing since years, long before it became the trend topic which it is now. Digitisation has already transformed paint-shop operation compared to 15 years ago. First of all, digitisation supports the supply on demand in all respects. One example is EcoSmart VEC, an inbuilt intelligence to control the air supply in the oven. The entire air management and this means also the energy consumption complies with the load of car bodies in the oven. This is only one example, but it shows: digitisation supports efficiency and efficiency leads to sustainability.

Another example is a control software V5.0 for Dürr’s dry separation system EcoDryScrubber. It helps to avoid malfunction and reduces the amount of limestone used for paint separation significantly up to 50 per cent.

A more universal approach is Dürr’s smart diagnosis tool EcoPRO4.X. The software uses smart data of the entire process, e.g. in PT/ED, for predictive maintenance and helps to avoid process disturbances which results increase in uptime.

Finally, not only talking about paint shops, but also final assembly, self-driving cars with an electric drive change the whole world of conveying and testing in the end-of-line area. With Dürr’s MES/IoT System for intelligent production management called iTAC.IoT.Suite (based on modern future-proof software technology) one can control and manage the whole paint shop as well as the complete plant. This is the foundation for Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) up to Big Data applications – modular and flexible.

Dürr improving internal processes by means of Industry 4.0
Dürr’s strategy digital@Dürr also contains the company’s comprehensive efforts to improve its internal processes by means of Industry 4.0. One major example is its project execution. Dürr is well-known for a very successful project implementation at nearly all places in the world. This is a result of well-defined project management processes supported – not only in Industry 4.0 – by digital support. Dürr has a central platform, the so-called Project Center, in its Intranet. Here every project manager and every team member has access to the projects he is working on. On the first page of the project one can have overview of all relevant data, all open items, etc. Here, the minutes of meeting are prepared online and all information is shared immediately. This Project Center also supports to track parts which are on their way to the construction site and the same status can be conveyed to customer. Whatever, open tasks, punch list, photos – actually any document is available.