Industry 4.0

EPISODE 9

Rob Miller, Wittmann Battenfeld Canada Inc. / ROTOLOADTM

Where do we go from here?

As I sat down to write this episode, I had just finished reading the President’s Message from Matt Bushman. I don’t think there could be a more appropriate theme for 2022 than “Creating Efficiencies”. One of the go-to statements that I frequently refer to as I manage our business is “Every day brings new challenges”. It’s possible that many of you have heard me use this statement.

The fact is that we are all on the verge of coming out of the most significant disruption to our daily lives and our businesses in our lifetime. These are indeed unusual times for manufacturing, with unprecedented disruptions.

I can say from our experience, that the situation over the past 2 years has affected every single aspect of our business. Customers, suppliers, supply chain, trucking, employees, production costs, production levels, an increase of errors and scrap, intercompany, and third-party communication are just the initial first topics that come to mind. Who could have predicted in March of 2020, the expanse and duration of the implications that we have all experienced and endured throughout the pandemic and the resulting mandates?

If anyone remembers one of my first episodes, I was in Florida on vacation when things started to get serious. On our way home, we learned that our high school age (grade 10) daughter would not be back in school for 3 weeks. That turned into the balance of the school year, and the next entire school year didn’t look much different. She will graduate high school this spring.

The question for me, and perhaps for some of you, is how do we come out of this in a way that we could sustain it with less impact if it was to happen again? Perhaps due to my interest in Industry 4.0 principles, a question that I would like to dig deeper into is…

How can employing 4.0 technology prepare us for some of these challenges and disruptions?

We must work together to eliminate or reduce the issues that we have experienced and mitigate the impacts. Matt mentions two primary issues: labor and supply chain. He then goes on to mention strategic planning, scheduling, automation, and recruiting as objectives that we need to enrich within our individual organizations and structures. Of course, all the most important functions of our day-to-day business operations. I believe that Industry 4.0 principles can contribute to each of these topics.

I don’t think there is any question to the fact that Industry 4.0 principles can lead to higher productivity, more predictable

INDUSTRY 4.0

EPISODE 9

maintenance requirements, better quality control, and an overall reduction in errors and scrap. Essentially, turn those daily challenges into victories. I also believe that these technologies can improve the lives of our staff, keep them more motivated and engaged, and help us to keep them.

From my experience and perspective here in Canada, I was thinking about the hiring of staff for our production/assembly department. When I was in high school (early 80’s), what we know as computers today were not even remotely a thing yet, and my grade 12 computer class consisted of a stack of 3” x 6” computer punch cards 2” thick that we would feed into a machine, just to calculate a simple math problem.

Today, students graduating from any level of education, public school, high school, college, or university, have grown up with a cell phone, tablet, or laptop as an integral part of their daily lives.

If I need help with my iPad, I ask my kids! If you process this logic, you may consider that it is not that surprising that we can’t find people to tighten nuts and bolts in machinery assembly? Or to work on our platforms dosing material, pulling parts, and completing secondary processes?

I have spoken with roto-molders that are double digit short of employees and operators for their production facilities. I have had several other discussions with roto-molders can’t find ONE employee, let alone 20 or 25 (or more). So, I will ask the question again, how Industry 4.0 principles can be implemented to address the topics and objectives raised by Matt: • Strategic Planning? • Scheduling? • Automation? • Staffing/Recruiting?

My plan over the upcoming episodes is to detail existing case studies where real-life applications from other manufacturing disciplines of how Industry 4.0 has addressed and made significant contributions to the objectives above.

Please feel free to reach out or send me a specific question that I can use as a focus of an episode and apply it to the list of objectives above.

As always, thanks for reading, and stay tuned.