42 | Plant & Works Engineering www.pwemag.co.uk April/May 2023 Energy & Environmental Management Focus on: Net Zero The Groupe Speciale Mobile Association (GSMA) has urged industry leaders to scale-up their use of smart technology in the race towards net zero and predicts that doing so could contribute up to 40% of the required global emission reductions. Using smart technologies to reduce energy consumption isn’t new for the manufacturing sector, but the challenges of implementing these technologies on-site have long been a barrier to adoption. In its research on Internet of Things (IoT) and carbon reduction, the GSMA estimated that in the manufacturing realm, 16% of the carbon reduction required to achieve net zero could be achieved using smart manufacturing processes. That is the equivalent of 1.4 gigatonnes of CO2, or the emissions of 140 million cars. Considering these extraordinary figures, one must ask why, in an industry that first coined the phrase Industry 4.0 over a decade ago, have smart technologies not been universally deployed? In fact, it is reported that just 1% of the manufacturing industry is currently using connected technology. The most common barrier to smart technology adoption in manufacturing is a lack of understanding of how easily these tools can be implemented. Casting our minds back to the inception of Industry 4.0 — a phrase originally used at Germany’s Hannover Messe exhibition in 2011 — smart factories were regarded as futuristic plants that would bear little resemblance to real manufacturing sites. Today, we understand that digitalization doesn’t necessitate an entire plant overhaul and is more often achieved incrementally, through scalable IoT technologies and big data. Gaining data using IoT Every manufacturing facility generates huge volumes of data each day ? either knowingly or unknowingly. Without question, data is the most valuable asset in manufacturers’ efforts to reduce carbon emissions. However, many manufacturers aren’t putting this asset to its best use. Without facility-wide data that evidences how much energy is being used and where, how manufacturers possibly begin their energy reduction journey? A common misconception is that all equipment must be smart to successfully generate data. In reality, even facilities operating with decades-old legacy machinery have the potential to pull data from their production lines; and those in industry know these plants are far more common than the futuristic smart factories imagined in Hannover in 2011. This may require a combination of sensors and intelligent software ? depending on such factors as the age and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of the equipment, and the communications protocols used ? but it is possible. Gaining insight into the energy consumption of a facility is key to identifying pain points. One might discover that small tweaks to several parts of production can yield significant carbon reduction. However, it’s also possible that individual pieces of equipment offer the biggest room for improvement. Gaining data from these areas is crucial to reducing energy used by individual machines, and there are various technologies that enable manufacturers to do this. One such solution is the CoroPlus suite of products, part of the data driven machining offer from Sandvik Coromant. The products are designed to help manufacturing organisations PWE Spoke to Jörgen Friesendahl, Global Offer Manager for data driven machining at Sandvik Coromant, who offers advice to the metal cutting industry on implementing smart factory solutions — both to reduce carbon and increase profits. Where the IoT meets sustainability
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