This is expected to change in what is being called the fourth industrial revolution, as demonstrated by the Industry 4.0 production line of the SmartFactoryKL technology initiative. "Industry 4.0 stands for the networking of state-of-the-art digital solutions to manufacture individualized products on flexible systems," says Eugen Schibli, Industry 4.0 Manager in the Industry Division of METTLER TOLEDO. He represents MT at SmartFactoryKL and supervises the weighing modules in the Industry 4.0 demo production line.
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Industry 4.0 is of global interest in the manufacturing industry. New products need to be brought to market at an ever-faster rate, and customers want individuality and quality. With its Industry 4.0 demo production line, SmartFactoryKL shows how manufacturing operations will be performed in the factory of tomorrow.
Azure blue or alpine white? Elegant interior design or something more sporty? When buying a car, the individual configuration of a person's dream car has long been a standard practice. However, for less expensive products, such as sneakers, custom-made production is the exception.
Individualized mass production
The 19 SmartFactoryKL partner companies have developed a production line according to Industry 4.0 principles at the Kaiserslautern Research Center. The system is divided into production islands, which consist of movable modules and a freestanding manual workstation. A flexible transport system sends the products from module to module by means of conveyor belts and a robotics platform. "The system can be used to produce personalized business card cases, for example." Eugen goes on to explain, "The product features that the customer specifies, such as color, engraving and accessories, are programmed on an RFID* chip. These could include: Red color, MT engraving, bottle opener accessory, final weight of 35 grams. With this information, the case moves through the production line." All the steps are stored on the chip. At the end of the manufacturing process, a high-resolution METTLER TOLEDO WMS weighing module determines the final weight of the product and compares it to the target weight and the production status on the RFID chip.
Smart manual workstation
If the weighing module detects deviations, it forwards the case to the manual assembly station. Using an RFID reader, a worker reads the information stored in the product memory, including the customer requirements and the current production status. Smart assistance systems provide support: A camera mounted above the workstation records hand movements. Based on these movements, it triggers the display to show the next work instructions on a screen. MT load cells are then used here for quality control. The container system that stores the components for the cases is built on load cells, which use the weight of each container to measure its fill level, i.e. the number of pieces in the container. This allows the system to check that the correct quantity has been removed and to identify errors. The networked manual workstation shows that Industry 4.0 does not just involve robots and automatic conveyor systems. It also means improved human-computer interaction. Eugen concludes, "The goal of Industry 4.0 is to have faster, more customized and more flexible production." Therefore, it won't be long until we can also configure made-to-measure sneakers that fit perfectly and match our favorite outfits.
The RFID chip (Radio-Frequency Identification) is the digital product memory of the business card case. RFID chips use electromagnetic fields to identify and track products in the various production steps or even throughout their life cycle.