Manufacturing Magazine December 2018 | Page 54

TECHNOLOGY
54
How essential is a product such as Agility in achieving a true smart manufacturing process ? Agility is an essential part of the smart factory landscape . Advanced scheduling and resource management capabilities allow the smart factory to deploy the correct resources to intelligently correct issues before they cause downtime . It means that the process runs continuously and doesn ’ t have to stop because of unplanned downtime .
Obviously , such a factory or manufacturing process requires a complex IoT – what role does Agility play in such a network in terms of overall operational process ? Agility takes the sensory readings from key equipment and turns it into actionable insight . Based on the health or otherwise of equipment , maintenance work can be scheduled and completed . A record of each piece of work is automatically recorded along with other key information to produce trend data that can be used to make smart planning decisions .
Can you tell me more about how that interconnected actual process works , and what role humans have in it ? The equipment will indicate how healthy it is based on certain parameters . When a certain threshold is reached Agility will trigger agility to create the most appropriate remedial action . That will most often be a work order directing a qualified human maintenance engineer to carry out some activity .
DECEMBER 2018