CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3 - 26

STRAIGHT TALKING

T

HE INTERNET OF THINGS
IMPROVES OPERATIONS

The IoT makes it possible to
increase manufacturing efficiency
and significantly reduce production costs
while increasing workers' motivation.
In one of Fujitsu's plants, we found
that the IoT increases the efficiency of
manufacturing a product by enabling
predictive maintenance for production
equipment. Sensors indicate when
maintenance is required before the
machine fails and causes a problem
in production. Over time, the ongoing
analysis of the IoT data allows us to
continuously improve the accuracy of
machine-failure prediction. In addition,
the IoT helps in highlighting obstacles to
efficiency and pointing to improvements
that can be made on-the-fly.
A side benefit of using the IoT to make
real-time improvements to a production
line is increasing the motivation of workers
on the factory floor. Putting them in
control empowers them and makes them
feel more valuable as they get involved in
understanding the data and acting on it.
As different types of data come into play
during operations, they all have to be
understood not just on their own but
also in the ways they correlate and affect
each other. It is necessary to understand
the raw data from sensors within the
context of the movement of different
elements of the production line. That has
to take into account multiple streams of
data involving both machines and human
operators. Once the data are put together,
they need to be analyzed to identify
causal relationships.
The IoT makes all that possible, linking up
all the streams of data and showing their
relationship to each other through data
visualization. For example, when multiple
product models are produced on the
same production line, the settings on the

26

PINPOINTING THE
POSITION OF A
PRODUCT IN THE
REPAIR AREA
wOULD REVEAL
wHERE IT IS IN
THE PROCESS.
BY ADDING A
SENSOR TO EACH
COMPONENT
AND A BARCODE
READER, wE wERE
ABLE TO SEE
wHERE REPAIRED
PRODUCTS wERE
IN REAL TIME.
line have to be adjusted multiple times
during the day. The IoT links different
streams of data-from workers, from
the equipment, from the manufacturing
management system-to visually display
what settings have been changed and
in what specific context, providing a
comprehensive picture of the entire
process and the bottlenecks that slow
it down.
Solving the problem of bottlenecks
is crucial in large-volume production
with very strict schedules. It poses a
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CTO Straight Talk - Issue 3
