Industrial Edge
Intelligence at the Edge: boost productivity and improve costs IN FACTORY AUTOMATION, EMPOWERING Intelligence at the Edge means reducing the amount of lost productivity a factory experiences in a year. The biggest contributor to this is factory down time or when the production line stops causing the company to lose money. In fact, according to an article from McKinsey published in October 2018 on Digital Enables Reliability Beyond Predictive Maintenance, factories experience on average 800 hrs./yr. of production line shutdowns or an average of 15 hrs./wk. This is a substantial impact to revenue and profit for a company. Take for instance that a car manufacturer loses close to $22,000 per minute when the factory stops manufacturing. This means it loses $1.3M/ hr. or close to $20M per week. Empowering intelligence at the edge has already made an impact on the manufacturing line improving productivity by 10% and achieving a 20% savings in maintenance cost. So, the net result of empowering Intelligence at the edge in factories works to keep production lines running by preventing costly production line shutdowns. While it’s clear that Empowering Intelligence at the Edge provides a boost in productivity and reduces operating costs, the real question is “What does it take to Empowering Intelligence at the Edge”?
A new way of thinking
As semiconductor suppliers, we need to deliver solutions that enable Intelligent Sensors and Actuators, support Software Configurable IO, and provide advanced diagnostics. Let’s review the importance of these four critical elements and the key capabilities they provide in Empowering Intelligence at the Edge.
Intelligent sensor technology
Sensors are found everywhere. They have become ubiquitous in our everyday lives. In the manufacturing environment, all manufactured products require an array of sensors that work in unison to help machines detect an object, determine the distance to an object, configure the colors and composition of an object, and monitor the temperature and pressure of an object or liquid. Commissioning new sensors to replace damaged sensors or adapting a piece of
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SOURCE: ANALOG DEVICES
As factories strive to boost productivity and improve operational costs, the demand to deliver new technology that Empowers Intelligence at the Edge is increasing. ”What does the edge mean?” The Edge is where the machine meets or interacts with the real world.
Intelligent Actuators: PD42-1243-IOLINK Stepper Motor and EoAT Gripper (TMCM-1617-GRIP REF) equipment to enable the manufacturing of a different product is labor intensive and it contributes a significant cost burden due to loss productivity. The cost of sending a technician to the factory floor to change a sensor and then re-calibrate it to the correct manufacturing parameters impacts factory throughput. If we multiply this same level of maintenance for every sensor across a factory, changing or reconfiguring a sensor is the single-most expense all manufacturing lines incur. IO Link is an exciting new technology that allows intelligent sensing all the way down to the machines on the factory floor. This new technology enables flexible manufacturing to improve factory throughput and operational efficiency. IO-Link is a technology that converts traditional digital or analog sensors into an intelligent sensor by providing bi-directional information exchange with the sensor. This technology adds a new level of intelligence and capability to remotely commission the sensor as well as the ability to react in real-time by making on-the-fly adjustment to the sensor parameters. Industrial Automation machinery now has a newfound intelligence to dynamically respond to real-time operation conditions based on the health and status of a network of sensors located across the
factory floor. By tapping into this reach sea of end-to-end information across a network of intelligent sensors, a facility can create a mapping of its factory floor to provide better real-time information to an overarching AI monitoring solution that can rapidly identify manufacturing bottlenecks, points of failure as well as provide a new capability to optimize the entire factory floor for better operational efficiency. The way IO-Link technology simplifies the commissioning process and improves factory throughput is by making sensors interchangeable through a common physical interface that uses a protocol stack and an IO Device Description (IODD) file. This allows technicians to quickly commission a sensor which results in reducing factory down-time and allowing the manufacturing line to be re-configurable on-the-fly. The adoption of IO Link sensors continues to accelerate as companies realize the benefits of having a common interface that makes exchanging various sensors such as pressure, proximity, and temperature as easy as plug and play. According to ResearchAndMarkets, the IO-Link market continues to grow, and it is expected to reach $12 billion USD by 2023 from $3 billion USD in 2018, at a CAGR of 33.56%.
IO Link hub and software configurable IO
While it‘s clear that IO Link technology is the catalyst behind a set of new intelligent sensors, IO-Link is also providing new opportunities that bring intelligence to the edge through IO Link Hub solutions. These new IO Link Hubs provide a simple way to add Analog and Digital IO expansion channels as well as the integration of intelligent actuators such as Solenoid and Motor Drives. The IO Link Hub provides a simple way to expand the type and number of channels needed to support unexpected manufacturing line re-configurations. These IO expansion Hubs provide a solution that leverages all the benefits of IO Link technology and simplifies the task to add Digital and Analog IO ports. These new class of products enable the commissioning of the sensors via the IO Link Hub which reduces factory downtime. Examples of these solutions can be seen from
in d u s t r ial et h er ne t b o o k
08.2022
