Digitalization: Paving the way for smarter, interactive and transparent factories and supply chains
Case in point: Leading FMCG company in India
At a glance
Focus: Digitalization: Paving the way for smarter, interactive and transparent factories and supply chain
Challenge: Due to continuous pressure of increasing production, reducing downtime had lately emerged as a big challenge for the companies
Approach: Enabling Digitalization to create smarter, interactive and data-driven factories to enable the customer to move from ‘preventive’ to ‘predictive’ maintenance.
Impact: Through the implementation of the solution, the real-time data was communicated to PLC and in turn communicated to customer
OMRON AUTOMATION
Headquartered in Kyoto, Japan, OMRON Corporation is a multi-billion-dollar, diversified company with business units producing industrial automation products, electronic components, and healthcare equipment and ticketing systems. OMRON Industrial Automation is a global leader providing complete automation solutions for industrial applications. It brings innovation to manufacturing sites through automation with "Integrated”, "intelligent" and "interactive" concepts with one of the world’s most sophisticated Input-Logic-Output-Robotics + Safety (ILOR+S) technology including the proprietary sensing technology.
OMRON Automation – India, now more than two decades old in the country, caters to over 7 industrial applications encompassing the wide requirements of packaging, automotive, material handling, solar, food & beverages, textile and panel building applications. The company is focusing on the solution business, including Robotics and IIoT, providing “One Stop” solutions, to improve the overall efficiency on diverse production sites. Focusing on the themes of quality, safety and the environment, they support manufacturing innovation worldwide with their unique sensing & controlling technologies. OMRON is rapidly expanding its operations with focus on all major cities making its presence felt across the country with a strong network of offices, automation centre, training centres, sales & marketing force, application teams, resident engineers and channel partners to address the ever challenging requirements of the customers. A major factor in OMRON’s progress globally & locally has been the strong commitment towards its customers keeping ‘Quality First’.
Leading FMCG company in India
The unit is engaged in the manufacturing of medicines, mineral & herbal products and is counted as one of the fastest growing FMCG companies in India.
Business challenge
Due to continuous pressure of increasing production, reducing downtime had lately emerged as a big challenge for the customer.
The customer had initiated a new endeavor of warehouse automation and was looking for advanced solutions for object detection in their lifts, turntables and conveyers. This involved using over a hundred sensors. The customer wanted to achieve a high uptime and reliability and hence the suggestion of smart IO-Link IIoT enabled sensors.
The main objectives to be achieved through this automation was reducing downtime
Decrease in frequency of sudden failures by predictive maintenance
Improve changeover efficiency for critical application area
Industry 4.0 solution
Enabling Digitalization to create smarter, interactive and data-driven factories to enable the customer to move from ‘preventive’ to ‘predictive’ maintenance.
While the customer was looking for the right automation solutions to manage the downtime, at the same time its team was not sure about the complete utility and advantages of adopting this Industry 4.0 solution proposed by Omron.
However, after demos and interactions, the customer was able to understand the integrated control concepts and intelligent data analysis capabilities, and visualize the potential and utility of the Omron solution to make the whole unit transcend from ‘preventive’ to ‘predictive’ maintenance which is the need of the hour and one of the most pertinent needs of the future.
A key step was to get the prototype developed and make it operational. It helped in a smoother start as well as to convince the customer about the benefits.
The Application team of Omron equipped with the right know-how of Industry 4.0, worked closely with the user and the System Integrator first to train them on technology and then to develop the customized solution as per their requirement with an end-to-end management approach.
Omron’s solutions mainly comprising of IIoT (IO-Link) photoelectric sensors, brought in the right changes enabling the customer find solution to all the challenges in sight.
As the solution was given for a new project, the main challenge was to upgrade the current knowledge base of the user and orient him towards exploring the potential of next level of automation driven by Industry 4.0. It was taken care by conducting in depth training. Financial risk was not very high; all the benefits of the technology were explored and so it led to reduced downtime and improved ROI.
Key benefits
| Area | Outcome |
|---|---|
| Downtime & Reliability | Through the implementation of the solution, the real-time data was communicated to PLC and in turn communicated to server. With this the customer was able to build the intelligence for predictive maintenance by giving alarm for conditions that required interventions. It helped to increase efficiency. As we were able to control failure, the cost of the downtime reduced significantly. Three key benefits achieved are listed below - |
| Time & Speed | The Multiple conveyor system, which with an installation of conventional/ regular sensors, would have been much more difficult to diagnose than one using IO Link sensors. The conventional sensors tend to fail without any prior warning thus adding to the down time. Also, in such a complex conveyor system typically using a few hundred sensors, it becomes time consuming and difficult to identify the faulty sensor. Omron’s IO link enabled instant identification of the faulty sensor thus lending to a considerable improvement in the changeover efficiency and a significant reduction in the down time. |
| Operational Benefit | Noteworthy reduction in frequency of sudden errors: |
| Downtime & Reliability | Another challenge faced by the manufacturer and the industry in general is maintaining the accuracy of the sensing devices. Over a period of time, several factors like dust accumulation on the sensing face, mechanical ageing of machine, vibrations, change in mounting of the sensors, misalignment, etc. impact the normal functioning of the sensor. Omron’s IO Link solution not only monitors the health of the sensor but also alerts the system in case there is an abnormality which can cause any operational failure. |
| Downtime & Reliability | Omron’s IO link solution monitors key process parameters through built-in function blocks to provide early warnings. It also helps to build statistics and trigger thresholds. For example, the photo sensor LED life warning is given to detect trends to predict maintenance requirements and avoid unscheduled downtime for sensor maintenance. |
| Productivity & Throughput | Reduction in faulty output due to unstable output |