Why did we choose a simple pillar drill?

We knew that SMEs which is our target market do not have in their factory those expensive machines neither. For most of them, their machines are old and not connected so the transition would be too scary and expensive. For the SMEs the challenge is how to be more competitive without having to replace their equipment which they are familiar with. The technicians work on them, for some SMEs, for more than 20 years. It would cost them a lot of money to replace their machines and to train the technicians to the new equipment.

The pillar drill represents the SMEs equipment: it does not have any intelligence embedded; it is just a SIMPLE pillar drill NOT CONNECTED to any sensors. It is like driving a car without the dashboard. You will never know if your car has a problem until the engine breaks!!! Even in old car like mine (old Touran 2004) you have at least the temperature of your engine and if it exceeds the threshold you would get an alert (in my case it would be a big red “STOP” written on my dashboard). Obviously with this big message on your dashboard you will stop immediately to avoid breaking your engine.

But why do I explain you all of this?

We noticed that SMEs do not realise that they can enter the industry 4.0 without having to spend all their money in new machines. A lot of simple and affordable solutions like the one provided by our company Industry 4.0 Solutions (I4S) exist to enable their digital manufacturing transformation.

Just by adding some non-intrusive sensors such as CT clamps they would benefit quickly from their transformation. For example, the energy consumption of their machine can tell them a lot and answer the following questions such as:

• How often the machine starts and stops? Information needed to calculate the Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE).
• Are there any anomalies in their installation? To prevent for example any overload of their electricity installation.
• Is the machine consuming more energy than usually? For instance, in a cooling system, it might happen to the compressor if there is no more liquid.
• How to manage their plant energy in a better way? It will reduce their energy consumption by 50% which is good for their bill and the planet.

Decisions leveraged by data can be taken and strategies to improve efficiency can be driven based on trusted insights. This strategy can be challenged by the metrics collected and can be improved based on that. We start to have a virtuous circle and continuous improvement.

Ok you can get and extract data but what else?

Collecting the data and visualising these data in a dashboard, in real-time is great and very helpful. But that is just the starting point of something much better and smarter. Let’s now imagine that based on that data collected you can predict when a machine will break weeks in advance! Then you would be able to plan your interventions in a period when the activity slows down.

Or/and you can calculate the efficiency of your installation such as OEE and optimise your manufacturing processes to improve your metrics.

Conclusion

There is no need to change all your factory to start your manufacturing digitalisation. We proved with our modest pillar drill that the industry 4.0 can be implemented easily with no excessive costs (£200 for our pillar drill) on legacy equipment and the benefits of the industry 4.0 are huge, as it:

• Improves Productivity: you do more with less. OEE will be improved.
• Improves Efficiency: less machine downtimes.
• Makes Compliance Easier: Complying with regulations in industries like pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing does not have to be a manual process.
• Reduces Costs: Better use of resources, less machine and production line downtimes, less resources, material, and product wastes…
• Improves the Return On Investment (ROI): To stay competitive and equip your production lines for the future, especially in an ever more interlinked, interconnected and global economies, after the Brexit.

Don’t think that the industry 4.0 is not for SMEs =>

Think big, Start small Act now.