February 2021

n TALKING INDUSTRY Small steps, big benefits The theme of the third in the series of Talking Industry online panel discussions organised by DFA Media, the publisher of Drives & Controls, was Industrial Networks, IIoT and Communications. The session chairman Andy Pye reports on the event. 24 February 2021 www.drivesncontrols.com T alking Industry is DFA Media’s new way of engaging with an audience of automation engineers through online panel sessions with experts in a particular aspect of automation. The third event in the series – and the first of six planned for 2021 – covered the topics of industrial networks, the IIoT and communications. The panellists focussed on three broad areas: n Taking that first step in the Industry 4.0 revolution. What are the options and how do they vary for companies, small and large, and in different sectors? n Enabling technologies in industrial communications. The importance of uniform standards. Are proprietary systems on the way out? n Moving data from the manufacturing plant through the enterprise – what are the technical issues and security implications? The 170 attendees ranged from novices to experts, and the live questions asked during the seminar reflected that. The session itself is CPD-approved and delegates can be issued with attendance certificates for their own CPD purposes, which makes the event invaluable for educational purposes. It was perhaps right at the end of the session that Daniel Phillips-Fern (Ixon Cloud) came out with the key message of the event – and the one that perhaps we should have started with! “From experience,” he said, “companies that three years ago were telling me ‘we don't want to start utilising this just yet’, are now three years behind. It's as simple as that. And their competitors are three years ahead of them. So the best time to do this was three years ago; the next-best time is now. There's a myriad options out there to help you do it, including ourselves, and many, many other vendors out there.” First steps In the first section of the discussion, all of the speakers agreed that the best way to initiate Industry 4.0 techniques is to start simple and take small steps. Even small steps will show an immediate benefit, often with minimal outlay. It seems that most companies fall into two categories: those who are already very familiar with the Industry 4.0 revolution and everything that goes with it; and others who are perhaps are still shying away and quite frightened as to what they need to do. “One thing to say straight away is that Industry 4.0 really does mean different things across sectors,” pointed out Daniel Phillips- Fern (Ixon Cloud). “A lot of companies kind of fall into that trap of thinking, that there must be one solution that meets everyone's requirements. And generally, there isn't. It just isn't how it works. “There's a key stage at the start: what do you want to achieve using the technology?,” he continued. “That can really differ across industries and across companies. Maybe you want to achieve higher machine or plant efficiency, or less downtime, or wastage; you might want happier or more engaged customers through delivering better service, or to produce a better end-product. “Many companies don't actually understand what they want to achieve before they set out,” Phillips-Fern added. “That, in turn, creates a strange dynamic where the solutions offered actually drive the end-result, whereas you really need to work backwards – start with what you actually want to achieve, and then find the right solution.” Barriers to entry include selecting vendors and technologies, costs, expertise, staffing, and finding project leaders. A large multinational manufacturer will have a much larger budget, and probably will already have the expertise and team to build or create the solution. But the time it takes to implement this across multiple sites will be much longer than for an SME machine-builder that just wants to collect machine data, and then