Schneider Electric started offering solutions that will support customers in fields like refreshments by improving the facility performance and bringing more flexibility to operations through digital transformation.
Schneider Electric stated that Henry Ford’s manufacturing innovation enabled many people to buy cars during what was referred as the ‘second industrial revolution’; cars became something everyone could buy with the discovery of a way to produce high car volumes at lower prices.
This was due to a moving assembly line, which meant fewer workers were required. The discovery also reduced the time needed to build a car from 12 hours to just 2 hours and 30 minutes. Most cars were made in one colour in order to simplify the production process and reduce the number of production lines required; black was chosen as the colour because it was the cheapest and most durable paint. Ford’s original manufacturing principles still form the basis of the principles used today.
The pressure to produce the right product at the right price is now greater than ever. Besides that, there are other challenges to deal with; for example, people want to know where their food comes from.
During the fourth industrial revolution, facility performance is valued more than operational efficiency; the era also has a flexible and traceable production. The technology that is currently available both makes operations more flexible and offers solutions to improve the efficiency. For example, in China, the leading dairy producer Yili Group managed to reduce energy costs by 5 percent and to increase operational efficiency by 19 percent using these technologies.
Augmented reality (AR) ensures employees have the right information where and when they need it, including maintenance data and visual guidance on where the error is and how to solve it.
AR can improve the efficiency
Considering that maintenance personnel are spending up to 50 percent of their time searching for information today, AR can be truly successful by lessening the downtime and improving overall equipment efficiency (OEE). In many cases, AR can even help improve security, as personnel do not need to physically open panel doors to understand what is happening. On the other hand, AR provides secure asset connectivity, performing maintenance operations from remote locations, changing production parameters and even connectivity to assets for troubleshooting.
Connections are established within end-to-end encipherment and remote access offers many savings in labour costs. In some cases, this operation has managed to reduce the troubleshooting time from seven days to four hours.
source: AA/ translated by Bazaar Team