Steps towards digitization of manufacturing in an SME environment

The term Industry 4.0 is projected as the future of manufacturing, offering competitive advantage and multiple benefits for those who can implement it1, 2. The gap seen by Manufacturing SME’s from their current status, to where they believe they need to align with Industry 4.0, can be seen an unsurmountable barrier blocking the technological move forward necessary for those enterprises 3. However, Industry 4.0 need not be implemented all at once. Enterprises should follow incremental steps of improving operations and identifying where digital integration with suppliers, the shop floor and customers will deliver operational benefits 4, 5. This paper describes an EU funded experiment, co-ordinated by a regional Digital Innovation Hub (DIH) aimed at the introduction of digitization of production operations in a manufacturing SME. The changes made by an Irish Precision Engineering SME towards integration of operator reporting, from manual to electronic format are presented. The benefits through cost effective methods to the organization, of small transformations are described. The technology used included MTConnect, IoT devices and open source software components from the BEinCPPS architecture. This facilitated the acquisition of production data and the energy monitoring of machines from the factory floor to a central repository where data analytics tools generated Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) for visualization on shop floor and mobile dashboards. The experiment showed how the use of commercial off the shelf technology, integrated with the facility’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system reduced daily production management tasks improved the management of equipment and resources while easing the burden on reporting by machine operators. The SME Management have gained awareness of the benefits of digitization taken in manageable steps and as a result are now engaged in further transformation within the organization.