Services for Industry 4.0 - Transformation of the Assembly Line

Big data, smart factories, the Internet of Things, cloud technologies, 3-D printing, sharing practices, product lifecycle management, individual customer orientation, etc.: each term has a meaning on its own, but Industry 4.0 is a common thread that ties them together into a new era of production.

First of all, the assembly line should correspond to a new trend: small series are replacing mass production. The focus is now shifting more and more towards the consumers, to their sophisticated needs.

The task of the owner of the enterprise is to keep track of the market trend, adapt production to a modified or new product, produce it in the right quantity, and again - search for new opportunities.

In such conditions, the time for restructuring lines is limited. It is no longer enough for the manufacturer to simply invest in high-precision assembly tools: their frequent and unforeseen modifications and programming for the release of the next series of products require unique competencies.

About 20 years ago, when enterprises began to actively use the electric assembly tools instead of pneumatic ones, the major tasks were to ensure stable quality, productivity and flexibility. The possibility of automatic tightening data collection was available before, and in Industry 4.0, this option has become fundamental.

Small batches of production force the manufacturers to more actively use data analytics, i.e. make decisions based on the indices of the assembly equipment, the process itself (Cp and Cpk), the results of statistical analysis, etc. High-quality data analytics is the foundation of the Industry 4.0 concept.

Assembly line data analysis

Many enterprises are already forced to complete the stage at which the staff was distracted by the search for data and an attempt to understand what information is available for processing and what is its value, and move on to the stage of analytics and real actions.

Here it is quite appropriate to give an example of the operation of a nuclear power plant: the reactor seems to be nearby, in the neighboring workshop, but it is impossible to observe its work in the usual sense due to known limitations. You can only monitor devices and make decisions through analytics.

The assembly line is similar - an increasingly important role is given to automatic tightening data transfer to the enterprise server in order to automatically calculate the tool indices, the process indices, and generate various report, e.g.:

• VIN-report (all tightening results with OK/NOK status and values on a certain vehicle);
• SHIFT-report (all indices related to a certain production shift);
• A list of workstations with low indicators for improvement (Cm / Cmk, Cp / Cpk indices) and other types of reports that are important for deep statistical analysis.

Unlike a nuclear power plant, assembly production has slightly different limitations - lack of time and people.

It is not easy to "grow" the necessary competencies to solve the above-mentioned problems in today's conditions. It is due to lack of personnel, gaps in the education system, the migration of specialists abroad and other factors. One of the solutions is to contact a specialized company whose main profile is the comprehensive maintenance of assembly equipment and specialized software.

Such companies will not only be able to perform maintenance (repair, maintenance, calibration, testing of tools), but also optimize the assembly process, for example, by developing a special tightening strategy for a problematic threaded joint, where the standard strategies do not work.

Imagine a situation in which the manufacturer uses a high-precision transducerised electric nutrunner, while the bolts behavior is unstable and sometimes, for some unknown reason, they are loaded above the yield strength, which leads to their deformation and even mechanical damage.

Such issues to be solved easier are to be addressed to the specific service providers

Industry 4.0 in Russia today: key competences for the assembly tools usage

Unfortunately, Russia has no competences to produce modern powered industrial assembly tool locally. However, the maintenance experts are available.

Since 20 years ago, Western manufacturers have exported not only products, but specific knowledge as well. Therefore, in Russia there are some companies that can maintain assembly tools and equipment. To work with the Industry 4.0 platform, Newton M experts highlight the following key competencies: