Fueling the digital factory with data to unlock efficiencies
Image Credit: Analog Devices
The digital factory relies on data to inform decision making and deliver actionable insights to improve operational and energy efficiencies.
Today, managers of industrial buildings and factories face a pivotal moment: how to achieve ambitious energy efficiency goals within technically demanding facilities while energy consumption grows.
Success depends on investments that increase energy efficiency, reduce emissions, and enhance competitiveness. For many, the key lies in accessing new data streams and insights from the factory floor to enhance operational understanding and achieve real-time production optimizations.
Overall energy efficiency could provide more than 40% of the emission reductions required by 2040 to align with the Paris Agreement. Each unit of energy used for heating, cooling or powering a factory will need to deliver more energy than it does today to achieve net-zero by 2050.
Understanding where energy is wasted in existing production flows and identifying productivity gains is crucial.
However, lack of real-time measurements hinders existing factory upgrades. Identifying asset-level and product flow information is needed to pinpoint opportunities for efficiency improvements. Fortunately, factory connectivity and digitalisation are rapidly addressing this challenge by capturing real-time data at the asset level.
Improved visibility into factory performance can help remove bottlenecks, extend asset lifetimes and reduce raw material usage – helping reduce energy consumption while increasing utilisation.
What is a digital connected factory?
A digital factory relies on data and consists of three key facets: connectivity, advanced automation and sensorisation of the factory floor.
By leveraging data and sensor insights, decision-making is informed and automation and robotics are deployed to streamline operations. This results in actionable insights that optimise operations and help reduce energy consumption and waste.
Help increase energy efficiency with the power of ‘connect, control, interpret’
CONNECT: The hybrid factory network
Manufacturers need enhanced connectivity to access and analyse data across the factory floor, aiming to unlock capacity and reduce energy consumption. Transporting, analysing, and merging this data with existing information streams is crucial. This is the first step in digitisation – adding real-time and non-real-time connectivity for operational insights.
Legacy fieldbus technology hinders bandwidth, time sensitivity and wireless device support. Upgrading to a unified factory network with seamless device connectivity and direct IP addressability enables near real-time communication, independent node configuration, and scalable sharing of insights.
Enhanced wired and wireless connectivity, with increased security and ease of deployment, allows companies to leverage data for productivity and energy efficiency gains.
CONTROL: Creating flexible, automated control
There is increasing demand across the manufacturing sector for flexibility while retaining performance stability, consistency of output and availability/uptime. Upgraded connectivity networks enable real-time data analysis, flexible manufacturing and advanced automation, allowing factories to efficiently produce personalised products and smaller batch sizes by quickly adapting to customer demand and specifications.
With configurable, flexible, and precise control systems, factories can optimise energy usage by changing production flows with minimal downtime. Precise equipment control can lead to improved operation, increased output, reduced energy consumption, and minimised waste.
Programmable logic controllers (PLC) are the central control system in modern factories, and I/O cards control everything from motors and limit switches to pumps and level meters. New software-configurable, universal I/O solutions provide flexibility to easily change factory setups, improving adaptability and enabling faster commissioning and reconfiguration.
Agile manufacturing requires nimble control systems and advanced robotic systems that adapt to worker positioning in real time. Mobile robots with innovative vision sensing technology and sophisticated algorithms enable efficient worker/human collaboration, ensuring continuous robot functioning. This enhances safer workspaces for humans while improving operational efficiency.
INTERPRET: Sensing and interpreting for new insights
To unlock the potential of digital factories, the network plays a crucial role in generating new data from assets. Deploying advanced sensors on existing assets provides valuable information for maintenance schedules, workflow routing and more. Smarter, smaller, and more sophisticated sensors are revolutionising industrial automation, enabling real-time identification of potential issues like product defects or asset health deterioration.
Complementing sensors with increased edge intelligence enables faster, more energy efficient, localised decision-making, unlocking new levels of operational efficiency. Sensor fusion and intelligent edge AI algorithms further enhance performance monitoring and optimization, while detecting deviations.
About Analog Devices
Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI) empowers the Intelligent Edge with the most innovative analogue, digital and software solutions, accelerating breakthroughs that benefit society and the planet.
Visit www.analog.com for more information.
