Drives & Controls July / August 2022

n TALKING INDUSTRY Reaping the benefits of digitalisation While a growing number of large companies, and some SMEs, are adopting digitally transformative technologies, the UK continues to fall behind other nations such as the US and Germany. Andy Pye chaired an international panel to explore the trends and their implications. 50 July/August 2022 www.drivesncontrols.com W hat can be done to further evangelise the benefits of digitally transformative concepts to improve efficiency and competitivity? How can the benefits of these concepts – such as IIoT, Industry 4.0, smart factories, digital twins, machine learning, analytics and AI – be promoted more clearly? In the latest of the Talking Industry series of online panel sessions, these issues were discussed by a group of experts including two experienced Talking Industry panellists and two new participants (see box, right). One of the newcomers, Thomas Schardt, vice-president for digitalisation, strategy and innovation at Nidec Motor in the US, explained that the company builds motors and control systems for anything that spins and moves – frommobile phones to large pumps and Nasa wind tunnels. IoT has been an extremely important part of its journey. What have been the benefits, and the value adds? And how has Nidec integrated its partners and clients into the process? “In this digitalisation world, there are new business models, new processes, new transparency, new insights, new interactions with customers and partners, new actions to take and this these all need to be identified, defined and implemented. It is not always a comfortable feeling,”Schardt explained.“My personal focus lies on transforming manufacturing into a more integrated enterprise. You can call that ‘smart factory plus’ – how to monetise your knowledge and why it doesn’t always work. “The key is to focus on specific aspects – the low-hanging fruit. Often a good place to start is smart maintenance (asset management and predictive maintenance). Other starting points may be product development, inventory management, the supply chain – there are so many smart things to do. “So choose your priorities, address your pain points,”he suggested.“But overall, to start the journey, start small, learn, adapt – and then scale.” Tony Coghlan, managing director of Turck Banner in the UK, pointed out that the pain points vary from customer to customer.“We see a lot of the pain points arising from machines that are old,”he said.“They are often unsure where to start, what data to collect and how to collect it, and are concerned that there may be a large cost. We are trying to get people on that journey at a very low cost. That said, people are starting to adapt and are prepared to throwmore resources at it.” People are important Michael Lefeuvre, European product manager for Red Lion Controls, acknowledged the importance of getting people to adopt smart technologies.“We always manage the technical issues OK – how we get the data from a machine and where to send it – but it is easy to forget the people. Adoption doesn’t work if the new system is too different to what they are used to. If everybody in the organisation has to change their daily working practices, it will never work.” First-time panellist Line Vaes, marketing manager for Priority Software, believes that even when companies realise they need to invest in new technology, they do not see the need to join it all together.“When we go to the actual daily business, we see that a lot of these systems and new technologies are not integrated. So there are have separate systems with separate silos of data, which don’t communicate with each other. “Data has to be entered two or three times, which can also cause errors, and valuable time is lost,”she said.“Adopting the new technology is a good thing, but get the best benefit, you need to make sure that it’s connected and integrated into the entire environment. “The key is finding a platform that is open enough, that gives you a future-proof technology to make sure that you can change and integrate other systems,”Vaes continued. “You don’t need to change your entire systems on day one – do it step-by-step, department by department. But you need to make sure that technology is open enough to connect all the new technologies, to make sure that you have one database to manage.” Chairman Andy Pye asked the panellists how users should cope with the need for an overall vision before they start. Thomas Schardt agreed that some users struggle with that.“It is often hard to visualise where you want to end up on the digitalisation journey and often almost impossible.”Identifying pain points and going step-by-step is the common approach. “Digitalisation,”he explained,“refers to the changing digital landscape, the support processes and tasks, the strategic use of technologies and using multiple automation technologies to really keep pace with changing customer expectations and economic conditions.