Manufacturing Magazine - October 2021 | Page 68

SMART MANUFACTURING

SIMON KEOGH GENERAL MANAGER , FACTORY AUTOMATION , SIEMENS DIGITAL INDUSTRIES

I think one of the most important , of course , is the sensors where we are picking up data around the factory . I think it ' s really critical because it ' s all about a connected plant , so undoubtedly , open networks and open protocols enable us to achieve this across many technologies and many different manufacturers . Of course , the automation and robotics layer is also incredibly important in terms of automating production , particularly as resources become scarcer and many of the products become more complex , with much more variety and bespoke solutions .

I think that two other areas in technologies that are involved are visualisation and analytics . So what we actually do with the data once we ' ve taken it out of the manufacturing plant is turn it into information and insights to make quick business decisions . I think in terms of closing the loop , technologies like cloud and the industrial edge will enable us to utilise technology such as artificial intelligence and machine learning . - Simon Keogh , General Manager , Factory Automation at Siemens Digital Industries production facility within a digital twin . “ I think we ' ll see much greater integration between the various stages of design , engineering , development , production , and then through servitisation and optimisation in terms of the product and the production , so I think that integration will happen more . I think we ' ll start to see lots of people who have been churning out lots of data , and creating data lakes to try and analyse and gain insights , understand what they need to pilot these types of applications and scale them . So I think we ' ll see much more of that rather than just trying to pour all the data into the cloud ,” comments Keogh .

68 October 2021