Five Questions with Bijal Patel

Sandvik Coromant: What scares or confuses people about “Industry 4.0”? And why do you think there has been resistance to technology adoption for the metal cutting industry?

Bijal Patel: I think Industry 4.0 can be confusing to people when the scope is unclear. It's not something that always logically transfers from academia and R&D arenas to practical execution in a factory. You have to remember that the term “Industry 4.0” refers to a revolution and not a physical thing you can buy. I think progress stalls or slows down due to “analysis paralysis.” At the end of the day, it’s about leveraging digital technology to improve ways of working in manufacturing like so many other industries, like retail, finance, marketing, travel and hospitality, have already done.

This resistance to technology has been a combination of factors around IT infrastructure maturity, constant firefighting, which doesn't leave much time for future initiatives like technology adoption, and to be honest, because we’ve survived so long without it and we have come so far. However, as we know, the pace of change is not constant, it's accelerating, and we’ve now reached a tipping point where picking up improvements by a few percentages here and there is no longer going to be good enough to meet tomorrow's challenges. Technology enablers, like cloud computing, are leveling the playing field to the point that the size of your business or amount of your operating budget, is not a limiting factor or barrier to having the latest manufacturing technology at your disposal. I am already seeing examples of small companies that are more technologically advanced than the big companies they are supplying. So while we have come a long way thus far without much digital manufacturing technology, the landscape has changed significantly enough so that it is no longer something that can be ignored. I think people will start feeling like the train is leaving the station and they need to jump on board or they will get left behind on the platform. I think the resistance will subside rather quickly once business impacts are realized. We are the point now where businesses need to ask themselves, how can we not afford to adopt this technology?

SC: How crucial is data to a machine shop and tell us more about how “big data” applies to manufacturing? How does MTConnect fit in?

BP: Data is incredibly crucial, that’s no surprise, but the critical part often missed about data is how your data is collected. Lean, Kaizen, Rapid improvement workshops, and just normal business transactions all need data to determine where improvements can be made and a way to measure if resources are paying dividends as expected. However, if data collected manually by people with stop observing, measuring, and logging things down, much of the data is probably missing or inaccurate. Big data will be more crucial to a machine shop going forward as the manufacturing industry’s digital maturity grows. If you don’t have automated data collection, you’ll never have big data at your disposal. I think a lot of the typical industrial engineering data collection work comes to mind right away. Often answers to things like “how long does this take?” are still answered by observing how long it takes, rather than the equipment executing the process and outputting the required information. I also think many measurement and quality assurance tasks will be positively impacted by technology.

Big data will allow the manufacturing industry to finally do the things its always strived for, such as being more predictive, more flexible or more productive, more cost-effective, and so on. It allows answering questions in dimensions that we simply can’t do today since often we only have data in excel sheets that humans need to work with. Even if more sizeable data is available in various enterprise resource planning (ERP) or manufacturing execution systems (MES), for example, its often siloed and not speaking with other systems, or more crucially impactive, based on manual inputs from people running equipment in factories. Pivot tables and v-lookups can only get you so far. Big data is the next level and phase for how the manufacturing industry will drive its operations.

MTConnect facilitates communication between CNC machines and any other software that wants to extract data from the machine. It’s a standardized format that ensures any machining “talking” can be understood by any software that is “listening.” It makes things a lot more plug and play, as well as unified regardless of suppliers on either the machine or software side.

SC: In your opinion, how many shop’s overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) numbers are inaccurate? And what manual machining tasks could easily be replaced by the right technology?

BP: That’s a great question. If manually calculated, OEE numbers will be off base 100% of the time to varying degrees. For starters, it’s a difficult thing to accurately measure the effect of short stoppages. So oftentimes they are ignored. While a few seconds here or there isn’t a big deal to OEE for a shift or a day, frequent micro-stops aggregated on the week, month or year have a significant impact on overall effectiveness. It’s a metric that is often labor-intensive to calculate manually as it requires merging data from multiple places, and so inevitably having true up-to-date and current OEE numbers become much more difficult to know. The only way to have accurate, real-time OEE is through an automated system that is taking information directly from equipment, not people running processes, or doing manual data collection.
You can immediately start understanding your OEE with machine monitoring software. Simple questions that often require hours of manual work can be answered automatically within seconds. Questions such as “what jobs are running on which machines?”, “how many parts did the previous shift make?”, “how long has that machine been down?”, “How often does that alarm go off?”, “what machines are behind the production plan?” would be instantly answered with machine monitoring software. Then immediate improvements could be made on many key performance indicators.

SC: Why do you think there is an immediate need for remote monitoring and remote installation possibilities?

BP: With the world being impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, manufacturing plants have been in the spotlight of many companies’ crisis management discussions as they need to ensure their supply chains have as few disruptions as possible. Depending on the business, perhaps they need to greatly increase output to supply essential items to survive the pandemic. Remote monitoring helps staff support operations with as little disruption as possible all the while maintaining social distancing guidelines. Furthermore, it helps support output increase initiatives by ensuring the processes are running optimally, and if not, allows fast reaction times even if people aren’t there to notice a machine has stopped for example.

SC: What is your background and why are you so passionate about digital machining? And what is one thing you’d want everyone to know about starting their journey towards a connected machine shop?

BP: My first job was in a factory doing all the typical things people entering the workforce in factories do. I was asked to look into problems, find ways to fix them, and ensure processes remain stable. I spent a decade working in a factory and it taught me just how fascinating the manufacturing industry is. Manufacturing is a bit mystical to me because it quite literally makes everything in this world, yet much of is hidden from public view. Manufacturing is home to some amazing engineering feats that are being achieved in factories every day. Being a part of that gives me a lot of energy and passion for digital machining because it is a key enabler to help solve the problems of tomorrow and ensure society can achieve what it sets out to do.

What's the one thing I'd want shops to know? Get a network installed so that equipment that will be a part of your technology solution has an ethernet connection. If you already have a network, ensure that there is an IT policy in place that supports the business objectives rather than restricts it. For example, make sure there are manufacturing asset-specific IT policies around things such as cloud. And even though I’ve already said more than one thing, the best advice is to “think big, start small, and scale fast.” Things don’t need to start as large enterprise program-level initiatives. One small pilot project in a remote corner of the plant is also a great way to start the journey of being a connected shop.

SC: Bonus Question: What’s your favorite Sandvik Coromant tool and why?

BP: That’s probably the toughest question you asked considering just how many fantastic tools and solutions Sandvik Coromant offers! To take a little creative liberty in my reply, I think the tool customers can leverage the most and is my favorite as well, is the deep understanding of manufacturing context Sandvik Coromant has. Tools are only as good as what you do with them, and I feel by partnering with Sandvik Coromant, any tool we offer is a game-changer and potential to be a favorite. Let’s shape the future together.