7 minute read
A catalyst for digital transformation
We speak to Nina Rasmussen, the new head of Norican Digital, about how digital is rapidly transforming foundry processes and her approach to digitally supporting customers in China – and across the globe. 数字化转型催化剂
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Nina, tell us a bit about Norican Digital and what excites you about your role.
Norican Digital drives all of Norican Group’s digital efforts, serving the needs of DISA, Italpresse Gauss, StrikoWestofen and Wheelabrator customers and their equipment (whether it’s from us or not).
Our HQ in Munich, Germany, is home to our Digital Lab. Here, we develop and evolve our latest digital tools, platform and infrastructure. A digital team in China do similar work, with other regional digital hubs in India and the USA arriving soon.
These teams include experts from our four brands whose in-depth process experience feeds straight into our digital tool development and is vital when implementing solutions at customer sites. Our strategic AI partner DataProphet adds cutting-edge data science and analytics expertise.
I’ve been involved in fascinating digital projects for some years: at DISA, we spearheaded many of Norican’s digital innovations and, in my current role, I work with some of the most forward-thinking foundries in the world.
What’s really exciting me now is shaping our future offering for a much more diverse group of customers. What’s right for a DISA customer in China may not necessarily fit a Wheelabrator customer in France, a StrikoWestofen customer in Germany or an Italpresse Gauss customer in America. We want our digital offering to be inclusive, to have something for everyone.
How do you support each customer’s digital journey?
There are two journeys we consider that ultimately drive one big improvement. The first track uses Digital to optimize processes (incrementally or radically), working towards zero waste (ultimate efficiency) and zero defects (ultimate quality). The second track is about reacting to and preventing downtime. The goal here is zero unplanned downtime (ultimate productivity).
On either track, customers will naturally be at different stages of maturity. Their maintenance may be purely reactive: wait till it breaks, then fix it. That’s costly. Or they may replace parts at scheduled intervals, which usually means changing them too soon or too late.
Digital sensor data showing a part’s actual condition lets you replace it at exactly the right time. That’s predictive Nina，请为我们介绍一下Norican Digital以及你作为 负责人，在工作中令你感到激动的是什么。 诺瑞肯数字 Norican Digital推动诺瑞肯集团的所有 数字化努力，满足迪砂、意特佩雷斯高斯、史杰克西和 维尔贝莱特客户及其设备（无论是否来自我们）的需求。 诺瑞肯总部位于慕尼黑，同时也是我们数字实验室 的所在地。在这里，我们研究和开发我们最新的数字工 具、平台和基础设施。同时我们还有一个在中国的数字 团队，也在做类似的工作；接下来印度和美国的其他区 域数字中心很快就会建立起来。 这些团队包括来自我们四个品牌的专家，他们对于产 品流程经验丰富，可以直接对接我们的数字工具开发， 并且在客户现场实施解决方案时至关重要。我们的战略 AI（人工智能）合作伙伴 DataProphet增加了尖端的数 据科学和分析专业知识。 多年来，我一直参与令人着迷的数字项目：在迪砂， 我们引领了诺瑞肯的许多数字创新，在我目前的职位上， 我与世界上一些最具前瞻性的铸造工厂合作。 现在真正让我兴奋的是，我们正在为更多样化的客户 群体塑造我们未来的产品。适合中国迪砂客户的产品不 一定适合法国的维尔贝莱特客户、德国的史杰克西客户 或美国的意特佩雷斯客户。我们希望我们的数字产品具 有包容性，为每个人提供一些东西。
您如何为每位客户的数字化旅程提供支持和帮助？
我们认为有两个数字化发展最终会推动一项重大变 革。第一个方向是使用数字来优化流程（增量或完全变 革），努力实现零浪费（极限效率）和零缺陷（极限质 量）。第二个方向是关于对停机时间的反应和防止停机， 目标是不出现计划外停机（极限生产力）。 在任何一个发展方向中，客户自然会处于不同的成熟 阶段。他们的维护可能纯粹是被动的：等到它坏了，然 后修复它。这样花费是巨大的。或者他们可能会按照预 定的时间周期更换零件，这通常意味着当更换发生时， 会要不太早或太晚。
maintenance and well-established. But we’re moving beyond that towards prescriptive maintenance. As well as predicting failure before it happens, prescriptive maintenance recommends which actions to take.
On the process improvement track, the first step may be to digitally monitor the entire process and look for improvements by analysing process data. This could reduce energy or material use, or remove bottlenecks. The next step is an AI-driven system that prescribes improvements to prevent defects or waste. The ultimate vision is autonomous manufacturing; where the production line automatically adjusts by implementing the actions it predicts will improve quality and remove waste.
Just remember – there are valuable gains at every stage and customers can take one step at a time.
What’s your vision for Norican Digital, Norican customers and the industry?
It’s simple. With traditional methods, maximising uptime can compromise efficiency, going for ultimate efficiency (by reducing cycle times, etc) can reduce quality, and so on. Digital’s power lies in being able to reach all these goals simultaneously.
Chinese foundries in particular are realising the huge potential of this: at the moment, Norican has multiple customers in China implementing the full Monitizer suite. For example, Huaxiang is implementing our digital tools and aiming to simultaneously reduce scrap, unplanned downtime and excess metal consumption while boosting profitability and sustainability.
So while our customers often start with their most pressing need, for example by using one of our digital products to streamline their maintenance, they won’t reduce quality or efficiency. Later, they can add further tools that improve quality and efficiency too.
They end up layering the benefits on top of one another, constantly unlocking bigger gains and sustainably growing their business. That’s my vision for our customers – and our industry in general.
Norican Digital acts as the catalyst, combining all four Norican brands’ incredible process and engineering knowledge with the power of AI and data to give our customers solutions that really make a difference, helping them achieve more than they expected to.
Our global footprint and modular digital product portfolio lets us offer digital solutions to fit different geographies and markets – and help every individual customer adopt digital technology in a way that suits them.
Which trends or issues will drive digital adoption?
What drives digital adoption differs wildly across our global customer base. Skills shortages are common. Storing expert knowledge digitally, tracking the process centrally, automating the process and its monitoring – all this frees up precious skilled workers to handle the most important and profitable tasks.
In Automotive, there’s an increasing requirement to prove and document manufacturing processes and CO2 emissions. 显示零件实际状况的数字传感器数据可让您在准确 的时间更换它。这就是预测性维护，现在已经在启用中 了。但我们正在超越这一点，转向规范性维护。除了在 故障发生之前预测故障，规范性维护还会给出建议，采 取哪些措施。 在流程优化的过程中，第一步可能是对整个流程进行 数字化监控，并通过分析流程数据来寻找改进方案。这 可以减少能源或材料的使用，或消除瓶颈。下一步是一 个人工智能驱动的系统，它对改进方案进行规范，进而 防止工艺缺陷或加工过程中的浪费。这些流程的终极愿 景是实现自主制造；让生产线通过实施其预测的措施来 实现自我调整，从而提高质量并减少浪费。 请记住——在每个不同的发展阶段都会令客户极大 获益，客户可以循序渐进地进行提升，一次迈出一步。
您对诺瑞肯数字、诺瑞肯客户和行业的愿景是什么？
目标很简单。在使用传统方法加工过程中，最大化正 常运行时间会损害效率，而如果追求终极效率（通过减 少循环时间等）会降低质量，诸如此类的问题。而运用 数字化的力量，意义在于能够同时实现以上所有关于质 量和效率的目标。 当前，特别是中国的铸造工厂正在意识到数字化生产 蕴含的巨大潜力：目前，诺瑞肯在中国有许多客户，正 在使用完整的 Monitizer套件。例如，华翔正在使用我们 的数字工具，旨在同时减少废品、避免计划外停机和降低 过度金属消耗，同时提高盈利能力和可持续生产能力。 因此，虽然我们的客户通常从他们最迫切的需求开 始，例如通过使用我们的一种数字产品来简化规范他们 的维护流程，但他们发现质量或效率不会受到负面影响。 因此接下来，他们会添加更多工具，使用我们的产品来进 一步提高质量和效率。 他们最终通过不断地提升可以层层获益，持续释放出 更大的收益并实现可持续地发展业务。这是我对我们的 客户以及全行业的整体愿景。 诺瑞肯数字化Norican Digital作为催化剂，将所有四 个诺瑞肯的出色品牌的流程和工程知识与 人工智能和数 据的力量相结合，为我们的客户提供真正发挥作用的解 决方案，帮助他们实现超出预期的目标。 我们的足迹覆盖全球，我们的模块化数字产品组合 使我们能够提供适合不同地区和市场的数字解决方案， 并帮助每个客户寻找到适合他们模式的数字技术产品。
哪些趋势或事件将推动数字化采用的进程？
推动数字化采用的因素在我们的全球客户群中有很大 差异。比较常见的共同点是技能短缺。以数字方式存储 专业知识、集中跟踪流程、自动化流程及其监控——实 现以上这些都可以让宝贵的技术工人腾出时间来处理那 些最重要和最可能带来收益的任务。
This will soon reach smaller suppliers, who may struggle to provide the detailed data required. Fairly straightforward digital monitoring delivers this cost-effectively, as well as opening up opportunities to reduce emissions while improving efficiency and quality.
What are the challenges?
Many customers still feel that Digital is intangible – where’s the immediate benefit? That’s why we develop practical digital products that solve a specific issue, quickly pay back the investment and usually fix more than that single problem.
Some customers are still concerned about the cloud and data security, so we work with the top cloud providers to deliver security comparable to online banking.
Occasionally, customers are sceptical about AI, wondering whether they can trust an algorithm over the intuition of experienced, highly skilled workers.
Firstly, they don’t have to make that choice – AI flags a potential cause of defects and suggests a solution. Experts can consider that and decide whether to implement it or not. We see AI as something that expands human capabilities. Our AI solution has been live in foundries for a few years now, and staff quickly learn to trust its fresh insights.
Secondly, experienced workers are only valuable if you still have those workers. A whole generation is retiring and many of our customers struggle with skills shortages. Fewer people are overseeing bigger operations – tools like AI-based analytics and data visualisation increase their capacity and effectiveness. Data-driven knowledge enhances and complements human knowledge.
What are you doing to overcome those challenges?
Apart from being very clear about how our solutions work, we test and evolve them in pilot projects with customers, so they have concrete evidence of what can be achieved.
We also help customers choose where to start with Digital to achieve a quick payback and solve their most pressing problems. Our NoriGate hardware can connect to any data source and both it and our digital platform, Monitizer, are future-proof and scalable, allowing customers to start small and scale up as fast as they like.
Wherever possible, we design our solutions to be open and equipment-agnostic, so they link to other systems customers may use and bring all their data together in one place, rather than locking them into multiple inflexible, proprietary ‘silos’.
And we always have a full development pipeline of new and improved digital tools, fresh capabilities or services that customers can plug into Monitizer.
What’s currently in that pipeline?
Right now, we are investing in the cloud-based infrastructure that underpins our digital products. There’s been a lot of uptake from customers and demand is still growing, so we’re further strengthening our systems to cope with that. That’s boring but important.
We’re also close to launching DISA’s prescriptive 在汽车行业中，对于证明和记录制造过程和二氧化碳 排放的要求越来越高。这些要求会很快波及到较小的供 应商，他们会很难做到提供所需的详细数据。这种难题 下，使用简单直接的数字监测系统，可以既经济又高效 地解决他们的问题，同时可以确切实现减排的同时提升 效率和保障质量。
那在数字化进程中会遇到哪些挑战呢？
许多客户仍然认为数字化是和自己有一段距离的—— 可以让企业快速直接获益吗？这就是为什么我们开发实 用的数字产品来解决特定问题、快速收回投资并且通常 解决的不仅仅是单个问题。 一些客户仍然担心云数据服务的安全性，因此我们与顶 级云提供商合作，使得服务的安全性可与网上银行相媲美。 有时，客户对人工智能持怀疑态度，想知道他们是 否可以信任算法，多过于信任经验丰富的高技能工人。 首先，他们不必做出这样的选择——人工智能会标记 缺陷的潜在原因并提出解决方案。专家可以考虑并决定是 否实施。我们将人工智能视为扩展人类能力的东西。事实 上，我们的人工智能解决方案已经在铸造工厂中应用了多 年，工人们会很快发现可以相信它的新见解。 其次，只有当你还在使用真实的人力的时候，有经验 的工人才会具有价值。而当一代技术工人都在逐步退休， 我们的许多客户就会开始为技能短缺而叫苦不迭。工厂中 会需要少量人员管理更大规模的运营——基于人工智能 的分析和数据可视化等工具提高了他们的能力和效率。 基于数据驱动的知识，可以增强和补充人类知识的不足。
那么你正在做什么来克服这些挑战？
除了要弄清楚我们的解决方案如何给客户提供服务 外，我们还在与客户的试点项目中进行测试和改进，因 此他们可以确切地知晓，看到实据，知道自己将会从方 案中如何受益。 我们还会帮助客户选择从哪里开始使用我们的数字化 方案，以实现快速回报并解决他们最紧迫的问题。我们 的NoriGate硬件可以连接到任何数据源，而且它和我 们的数字平台Monitizer都是面向未来且可扩展的，允 许客户从小幅提升着手并以他们喜欢的速度快速扩展。 我们尽可能将我们的解决方案设计为开放且不受限 于设备的，因此它们可以链接到客户可能使用的其他系 统，并将他们的所有数据集中在一个地方，而不是将它 们锁定在多个不灵活的专有“孤岛”中。 我们始终拥有一套完整的开发管道，可以供应全新和 改进的数字工具、新功能和服务系统，客户可以将其应 用到Monitizer产品系列中。
目前该开发管道中有什么呢？
目前，我们正在投资基于云数据服务的基础设施，这 可以更好地支持我们的数字产品。客户数量的大量增加 和客户需求的不断增长，使得我们开始进一步加强我们 的系统以应对这种情况。这些云端服务的搭建单一枯燥
