During an SAI&C webinar we hosted in July, technology forecaster Jim Pinto predicted that this would be the mantra of the successful manufacturing companies of the future. At first it sounds like an oxymoron, surely you cannot make something that is cheaper and do it faster and expect it to be better? Or can you? Well, probably not, unless you open your mind to the structural changes and trends that are shaping the markets and economies of the new world – take a look.
A futuristic view of world manufacturing
Old style globalisation was driven by the need to find cheap labour in order to compete; new globalisation is driven by the need for new knowledge to do the same. Because this is largely Internet-based, physical location is becoming much less relevant and it is this trend that futurists like Pinto believe will cause massive disruptions in where and how the world’s goods and services are produced tomorrow.
In the future, distributed manufacturing facilities will produce for local preferences and they will move when markets become depleted. Terms like ‘Third World’ will become obsolete, productivity will replace the arms race and China will be the biggest manufacturing nation in the world (and also one of the biggest markets for process automation equipment).
As these trends accelerate, the automation suppliers will feel the effects as much as anyone. They hold the keys to productivity and will be forced to engineer new knowledge into the solutions demanded by a manufacturing fraternity scrambling to stay ahead of a new global game. Value will come from customisation and local styles, with labour reduction not the sole objective of automation. Best overall productivity is what wins and in tomorrow’s world of dwindling raw material supplies and constantly increasing energy costs these factors will start to dominate the manufacturing value chain alongside labour.
The need for distributed processing and ubiquitous communication will grow as intelligent sensors and actuators merge into the intelligent I/O platforms that start encroaching on the cost of a traditional PLC, DCS or scada solution. The plethora of proprietary fieldbus standards will shrink as the importance of industrial Ethernet grows exponentially alongside the number of Internet users, and industrial automation will move quickly to take advantage of the benefits of wireless technologies. However, the future of industrial wireless will not just be a ‘cobbled together’ set of commercial products whose primary purpose is wire replacement. Security has become far too important, new leadership will go to those who use wireless imaginatively to reshape factory and instrumentation markets.
Production lines will consist of self-monitoring machines – in some cases reporting to other machines – with self-knowledge built into them in the form of predictive diagnostics. The machine will call a technician before it fails and tell them what spares will be required for the repair, and it will all be done over the Internet.
Pinto’s pointers for competitive manufacturing in summary
* Globalisation – faster, cheaper, better.
* Smaller manufacturing plants located near regional markets.
* Smart products and equipment – easy for the operator.
* Predictive diagnostics.
* Industrial wireless growth.
* Pervasive Internet.
* Machine-to-machine communications.
* Connectivity = Productivity.
An interesting point struck me out of something that was said at the beginning of the webinar. “Futurists look for new trends and base their forecasts on those that appear to accelerate the fastest.”
Looking through this issue it hits home how the editorial content, not only from the majors but also some of the smaller automation suppliers, is starting to follow the pointers. We report on iPhone applications from SEW-Eurodrive, a PCS7 migration project by Systems Automation & Management that involved the addition of smart diagnostic information, Vega’s next generation modular pressure instrumentation, Sovereign Labelling System’s decision to switch to Omron control for new machine design, Wonderware examines how unification in industrial information applications will drive efficiency forward and there are too many articles related to industrial Ethernet to mention them all.
New threats will no doubt also emerge. Using public forums like the Internet for industrial control applications based ‘in the cloud’ comes with obvious inherent security problems, Andrew Ashton investigates the subject in detail in ‘This is war’ – enjoy the reading.
(The full Jim Pinto presentation and slides can be downloaded at http://tiny.cc/sadfn)
Steven Meyer
Editor: SA Instrumentation & Control
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