When production plant managers plan the digitalization of a factory, they often mistakenly and rather idealistically think of all the changes that the introduction of Industry 4.0 solutions promises. However, before you start digitizing according to your dream vision, you should first ask yourself the following important question: Why focus all your efforts on this project and not on other goals?

Since 2014, the European Commission has been monitoring the level of digitalization in the member states, with progress being recorded in the annually published reports on the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI). Germany ranks eleventh among the 27 Member States in the DESI 2021. While Germany achieved relatively good results in the areas of broadband connectivity and 5G readiness, there is an extreme need to catch up in other areas.

For example, less than a third of companies (29%) exchange information electronically and only 18% of SMEs issue electronic invoices. Hardly any improvements have been made in these two areas in recent years, and the need for digitization will continue to increase in the coming years.

Despite all this, one should neither succumb to the future vision of an ideal intelligent factory that is immediately available, nor should one strive for rapid full automation of production processes. Instead, a strategic approach is recommended.

Industry 4.0 - step by step

Determine problems and assess their extent

The first step on the way to digitalizing a factory should always be to identify the existing problems in the plant. The key processes and tasks that require improvement should be identified. The extent of each identified problem should then be assessed in order to estimate what level of optimization is actually required. Below you will find some examples of possible problems and corresponding suggestions for assessment methods.

• Is the administrative workload in the company too high (especially paperwork)? Determine who manually re-enters all data from analog production reports in an ERP system and how much time is required for this per day.
• Are there frequent errors in documents? Check in which documents errors occur, how often they occur, who is responsible for correcting them and how much time is needed for this.
• Has material ever gone missing? Find out how much material is lost on a weekly, monthly and annual basis and the value of the material in each case.

By assessing the scale of each daily problem, it is easier to identify which are real problems and which are so sporadic that they do not require immediate intervention. The information gathered will prove helpful in setting specific targets.

Observe and map

When managing a factory, it is often completely unclear how much time is actually required for data management - including seemingly simple tasks such as the ongoing maintenance of documents. Before you start setting goals for the digitization process, it is therefore important to observe and map existing procedures. On this basis, it is then much easier to derive how the identified problems can best be solved.

The purpose of modeling business processes is to show how a system currently works and to highlight how it should work. Modeling gives you a comprehensive overview of the flow and sequence of tasks during a given process, making it easier to identify errors or aspects that need to be optimized.

With the help of a model or the mapping of a specific process, you can determine how much time is actually spent on a certain activity and to whom it is allocated.

Control performance with a dedicated application

If one of your plant's problems is the low efficiency of a machine, it is worth using an appropriate Industry 4.0 solution (e.g. Comarch Industry 4.0). With its help, you can check at any time whether the machine is working, measure the production speed and much more. The data collected by the application also provides specific information on production interruptions and their duration. By analyzing the data, it is easy to determine what losses have been caused by the use of a given machine.

The same applies if there is a production stoppage but you do not know the cause. In such a situation, installing a special view for the machine operator (available as part of the Industry 4.0 application) can help, allowing the production employee to immediately find out the reason for the interruption.

Setting goals and implementing solutions

Goals can only be formulated once problems have been precisely identified, their extent assessed and the relevant processes observed. We recommend using the universal SMART method, which allows you to easily define the specific, measurable, appropriate, relevant and time-bound goals you want to achieve.

If the greatest loss in your plant is caused by manually filling out production reports, first introduce an MES (Manufacturing Execution System) that automatically downloads the production orders from the ERP system (e.g. Comarch ERP). The corresponding Industry 4.0 application from Comarch offers the option of displaying relevant information directly to the person carrying out a process (i.e. which task to carry out, how many repetitions to run through and which procedure to follow). In turn, the processing progress can be reported manually by the respective production employee via an intuitive touchscreen or automatically by the machine. All data is then immediately transferred to the ERP system. This allows the production manager to keep a constant eye on the status of a task, the quantity produced and key production figures.

To counter the problem of material loss, the Comarch application includes a function for recording material consumption. On a screen next to the machine that is responsible for a particular work step, the production employee is shown a list of the materials required and the quantities to be used. The employee records the actual material used by scanning the label of the relevant batch and then entering further data (such as the quantity used) in the application. This data is stored in a database and transferred directly to the ERP system. This makes it possible to track which material was used when, where and in what quantity at any time.

If you have identified problems with quality control, the next step is to introduce the checklist module. This regularly assigns tasks to a responsible employee, such as measuring specific values or properties of a product or material. The corresponding measurement data can be saved directly and transmitted to an external quality management system, which significantly improves continuous monitoring.

By tackling all the problems that you have previously identified and precisely named one after the other and following your defined strategy, you can build your intelligent factory of the future step by step.