The Internet of things and Smart

Manufacturing
Contents
Executive Summary .................................................................................................................................... 2
Taking the Factory to the Future................................................................................................................ 3
The Genesis ................................................................................................................................................ 6
The Paradigm ............................................................................................................................................. 6
The Enablers ............................................................................................................................................... 8
The Application .......................................................................................................................................... 9
Seamless and Connected Operations .................................................................................................... 9
Better Operations Visibility .................................................................................................................... 9
Robust and Optimized Shop floor Asset Management ........................................................................ 10
The Transformation .................................................................................................................................. 11

Table 1: The Factory of Today Vs. The Factory of the Future .................................................................... 7
Table 2: Enablers for Industry 4.0 .............................................................................................................. 8

Figure 1: Increased Product Customization and Tighter Project schedules ............................................. 3

Figure 2: The Evolution of Industry 4.0 ...................................................................................................... 6
Figure 3: The Paradigm of Industry 4.0 ...................................................................................................... 7
Figure 4: Connected Operations ................................................................................................................ 9
Figure 5: Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence Software and its key characteristics ........................... 10
Figure 6: Asset Management, Enabled by Industry 4.0 ........................................................................... 10
Figure 7: Steps to Initiate a Smart Factory ............................................................................................... 11

Executive Summary
The internet, as a technology has now been in place for over three decades and can be claimed to be a
truly pervasive medium. The application of internet has been profound, with game changing uses in
every human endeavor, be it communication, finance, education, entertainment or travel. Businesses
have also benefited, as the internet has removed boundaries that hitherto existed like physical
distance, lack of information, access to markets or the challenges to innovation. Simply put, the world
is more connected, with the connectivity enabling better interaction.
Technology has also played a major role in the industrial sector, since the first Industrial revolution,
driven by steam and water power in the late 1880s. We have subsequently seen two major
revolutions, the advent of mass production by Henry Ford and the increasing use of electronics and
computers since the 1960s to control every aspect of the Manufacturing enterprise. We are now in the
cusp of another revolution, the era of smart manufacturing which is driven by a phenomenon called
the Internet of Things.
The Internet of Things, in a very simplistic way implies the number of devices in present use, which are
connected to the internet. By the end of 2020, it is estimated that nearly 50 billion devices will be
connected to ther internet. Many studies indicate that close to 80 % of all maufacturers will be using
IoT applications by then, leading to a potential economic impact of more than $2 Trillion. This has been
aid by corresponding market drivers as well as new and innovative product technologies.
This scenario is fundamentally changing the way manufacturers conceptualize, make and deliver their
products and services. We can confidently state that the use of IoT will become a must needed
competitive advantage; the lack of which will severely cripple the prospects of any manufacturer. This
paper is an attempt to spread awareness about the Internet of Things as a requisite tool in the hands
of every manufacturer. The paradigm of IoT is explained, along with the enablers required for
adopting smart manufacturing technologies. Some specific applications in the shop floor environment
are mentioned, along with some broad steps which could be adopted in implementing an IoT strategy.
The structure of this whitepaper is narrative with the illustration of a highly likely scenario in a plant
which makes engines, where a plant manager would seek the help of a consultant to transform a
conventional factory into a factory of the future, with the help of Smart Manufacturing techniques,
aided by the Internet of Things.

Taking the Factory to the Future

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed
the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
Warren G Bennis
Dinesh is the head of a large plant which makes a family of car models for a leading Automobile plant. .
Dinesh started his career at this company as a Graduate Trainee, 28 years ago at a time when the
plant was being built. Dinesh started off in the Manufacturing Division and has since worked in roles in
quality, engineering, maintenance and plant administration, rising up the rank by taking on larger
responsibilities and successfully completing them . Dinesh is among the few people who have been in
the organization for a long time, since its inception 30 years ago. Hence, he is highly respected and his
opinions are regarded.
The first thing Dinesh likes to do as he enters office is to go through his mails. Todays mail has a new
agenda in store for him. He has been entrusted with the task of leading a task force, set up as part of
the Companys 30 year Anniversary Celebrations. His task force is responsible for modernizing all the
Manufacturing Facilities, as part of an initiative to spell out the future of the Company. Dinesh regards
this as a key task as it has high visibility and an impact on the future of the Companys continued
success. There is also a personal agenda; successful completion of this activity will, for sure elevate him
to the position of Head of all Operations for the Company.
Earlier modernization efforts, which usually took place once a decade, focused on procuring new
equipment and facilities, and discarding the new ones; Dinesh wants to do something different this
time. He is particularly interested in reducing the complexity of operations, which has gradually
increased over the years without losing focus on the high productivity which has been a benchmark for
the Organization. At the same time, it would be wonderful if he could make the plant highly flexible
and agile to meet the customer requirements of getting a greater variety of products, as well as getting
them quicker. He plans to do a pilot project and implement it across the other plants.

Figure 1: Increased Product Customization and Tighter Project schedules

Dinesh is determined to come up with a novel project with high impact, which will shape the way
products are made in the Company in the future. He plans to come up with an idea and take it to his
task force to convert into a viable concept.
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As he is about to head into his customary daily walk through the plant; he encounters the first problem
of the day. The plants most critical equipment, which is a stamping machine, has broken down due to
a faulty part for close to half an hour now. This equipment is critical because it is the bottleneck
equipment in the plant, that is the plants production rate is directly linked to it. This is the second time
that this part has failed, and the Maintenance team has not accounted for this failure rate. His
Production Control team has just reported that over half of all the vehicles that were produced last
night need to be dis-assembled, as the Production Planning team had mixed up the job cards and
hence these vehicles had been fitted with the wrong seats and the instrument panels. Added to this is
the chronic woe of high product mix this month; the change-over time has reduced the plants
production rate by more than 15 %. As he mulls over these points during his walk-through, Dinesh
wonders if there is a better way to Manufacture cars, or for that matter anything !
As he enters his room, thinking about the issues he needs to address, he sees a host of messages on
his mobile phone. Two messages draw his immediate attention; one from his son and another from his
Doctor. He has a Facebook notification from his sons profile, stating that he has Checked-in at a
movie theater. Dinesh is sulking over this, as he had explicitly banned his son from watching movies till
his grades improve. Dinesh is thankful that his his son uses Facebook on his Smartphone to check into
new places; unmindful of the fact that Dinesh is tracking his movements. Moving on, Dinesh is relieved
to see a message from his Doctor saying that his mothers health parameters, taken from their home
patient monitoring device show her health to be fine and she does not need a physical check-up this
month. As he thinks over these facts, he comes to the conclusion that the world is made much better
for the use of such smart devices. And then, there is a spark
Smart is the way that Dinesh wants to manufacture cars. He needs elegant solutions, which reduce the
complexity that is inherent in todays factories. And Dinesh recognizes that making a device smart is
one terrific way to start it. But there are a lot of other factors involved ! What about the enabling
ecosystem? or the technology required to enable such smartness ? Can todays machines do more
than just obtain instructions and also smartly detect and avoid problems? Dinesh starts jotting down
his thoughts feverishly.
Over the weekend, Dinesh flies out to his alma mater for a dinner meeting of his Graduating batch. He
is excited to catch up with his professors and particularly his classmates, as it is always good to know
how they are doing, both professionally and personally. Dinesh is an on-and-off attendee to these
meetings, but is generally in touch with most of his classmates. This time, he is pleasantly surprised to
meet Devaraj, one of his closest friends after a long gap of a decade. Devaraj joined the automotive
company along with Dinesh, but shifted to a Consulting career in Engineering and technology after 10
years. He has international work experience in diversified domains, apart from the automotive sector
and has made a mark for himself in the Engineering Services, Solutions and Systems space. Being a
former colleague of Dinesh, Devaraj naturally enquires about the happenings of his previous company,
and, in the course of the conversation Dinesh mentions his idea of wanting to make manufacturing a
whole lot smarter.
Devaraj sports a huge smile on his face and tells Dinesh that he can help him with exactly the solution
he is looking for !

An Analysis of the Problem

Devaraj understands the tacit requirements of the entire manufacturing lifecycle in different industries
like automotive, heavy industries, aerospace and medical, among others. He is also aware of the
significance of culture and organizational structure across different organizations across the globe, and
the influence of these factors on the way they conceive, design and make a product. Devaraj is eager
to help Dinesh.
Since Devaraj has previously worked in the same plant as Dinesh, he understands that the philosophy
of manufacturing hasnt changed much. Dinesh briefs Devaraj about the problems he faces and
highlights complexity as the most important problem he would love to address.Devaraj is interested in
solving this problem as he can see himself and his firm delivering great value to Dinesh and his
company. They plan on meeting at Dineshs plant next week in order to formally start a process of
engagement. Dinesh is now excited.
The next week, Devaraj arrives at the plant early on Monday morning. The first thing that he does is to
take an unplanned and unguided tour through the shop floor, in order to fathom for himself the
culture of this plant. To enable a better understanding of the value chain, he starts from the end of the
shop floor and works his way backwards. The focus is also on a single piece of tooling, an engine
holding fixture so that he may record patterns. He first talks to the machine operators, who add direct
value to the product and then to their supervisors. He also runs into employees from other functions
like Engineering, Quality, and Maintenance & Production Control and asks them both generic and
pointed questions.
From his observations, Devaraj is able to highlight some core problems which, if addressed, would
make the plant really smart. He feels that the level of automation in the plant is low and increasing it
could help in reducing human intervention, which is often unstable and hence unreliable, particularly
in the case of deviation. He also advocates the increased use of sensors to measure key performance
measures at an individual process level. The true potential of these sensors would only be realized if
continuous feedback mechanisms are in place. Visibility also needs to be enhanced, for it not only
improves the efficiency of the plant but also provides benefits which extend to the entire supply chain
enterprise, by improving inventory management. Also, maintenance needs to be proactive and not
reactive, with the machines themselves being able to predict when they need a health check-up or
surgery. Finally, providing an unique identity to individual components would help in better
traceability would help in the case of high product mix, enabling that the component itself controls the
kind of processes that it undergoes.
Devaraj suggests that these elements are silently building a revolution in industry, particularly in
Europe and Germany. This revolution is being referred to as Industry 4.0.

The Genesis

Figure 2: The Evolution of Industry 4.0

The term Industry 4.0 was first used in 2011 at the Hanover Fair, the worlds biggest industry exhibition
where a set of recommendations were presented to the German Federal Government. The notion
caught on, and was supplemented by a McKinsey interview between their experts and executives of
Robert Bosch. The crux of the ideas is interconnected networks of machines, sensors and products,
resulting in intelligent value chains. The phrase 4.0 recognizes and pays tributes to the previous three
industrial revolutions, which are mentioned in the above illustration.

The Paradigm
Though the term Industry has many connotations, its reference in this particular perspective
encompasses the broad enterprise which is required to realize a product, both in the discrete and the
process kind of manufacturing. A typical value chain in such an industrial context would involve the
flow of both material as well as information. The paradigm shift in Industry 4.0 is the way in which
information is generated, shared and analyzed in order to address the typical manufacturing
challenges which managers like Dinesh face.
The motivation behind Industry 4.0 is to achieve specific objectives. It intends to enhance product
innovation through better feedback of the product in its usage scenario. Collaboration is enhanced
between different elements of the value chain. The manufacturing process itself is greatly enhanced,
due to better measurement, control and analysis mechanisms. And all of these are made possible due
to the evolution of cyber physical systems.
Cyber-physical systems enable physical systems to be connected in the cyber world, thus enabling
better interaction and control mechanisms. Imagine every device in the world, having its own IP
address and being able to communicate with other devices in networks. The advantages are many, and
significant! We refer to this as the Internet of Things, which will change the way we interact with
physical devices, much as the same way in which the internet has changed information and
communication systems.
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The marriage of cyber physical systems into the manufacturing enterprise thus gives birth to the
smart factory or The Factory of the Future. There is a significant improvement in the usual
parameters by which conventional manufacturing systems are evaluated, like safety, quality, time and
cost. There are additional, path breaking benefits like flexibility, self- adaptability, self-learning,
adaptive tolerance definition and control, greater visualization and better risk management. Needless
to say, automation levels improve drastically and are also more efficient and effective. Complexity
levels would also drastically reduce in greatly spread out global operations and supply chains!

Connected
Processes

Connected
People

Industry
4.0

Connected
Products

Connected
Plants

Figure 3: The Paradigm of Industry 4.0

The Factory of today

1.

2.

3.

4.

Machines need to be pre-configured and

adjusted for every change in
product/operation. They operate
independent of each other.
Visualisation is extremely difficult so the
plant operates in silos, each of which have
their own efficiencies and hence are
process driven.
A great amount of time, cost, resources and
engineering skill is spent around product
customization. The plant can produce its
run-of-the-mill products but customized
products are produced separately, resulting
in huge delays.
Inventory is stockpiled in order to account
for variation in the process.

The Factory of the future

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.
5.

Human efforts and ergonomics are based

on physical structure, operating mechanism
& machine limitations.

Machines work intelligently around

processes, parameter/settings as well as
safety mechanisms by communicating
independently with other machines
Visualization is comprehensive, with causeand-effect being clearly recognized. Problems
crop up to the surface and, unless corrected,
have the ability to stop production.
Optimized individual customer product
manufacturing via intelligent compilation of
ideal production system which factors
account product properties, logistics,
security, reliability, time, costs and
sustainability
Just-in-time and lean manufacturing
operations are possible as the machines plan
production resources on their own
The machine is sensitive to human factors
and accommodates the humans around it.

Table 1: The Factory of Today Vs. The Factory of the Future

The Enablers
The internet, in its various forms has been in widespread use for at least two decades now. However,
the single most important enabling factor in its increasing application in smart manufacturing has been
the corresponding up gradation of the hardware elements, specially sensors and mechatronics to a
level to which the speed, bandwidth and efficiency of the internet can be applied for real time data
gathering, process monitoring and control. Listed below is a description of the key enablers to a
successful Industry 4.0.

Hardware

Internet of Things

Software &
security

Big data &

analytics

Increased use of mechatronics for more quick, accurate and reliable

performance.
A combination of Sensors for detection and measurement; actuators for
movement and control.
A standardized IP based network which connects not only the plant but also
the enterprise, consisting of suppliers and customers.The kind of network
could vary: WPAN, 3G, Wi-fi, LTE
Devices and machines have their own IP addresses and can independently
communicate with a central hub as well as with each other.

Ability to analyze complex and huge volumes of data from different sensors
and use them for real time interventions.
Security procedures like hardware encryption and network security for
transit data.
Engineering for harsh environmental conditions like heat and moisture

A standardized IP based network which connects not only the plant but also
the enterprise, consisting of suppliers and customers.The kind of network
could vary: WPAN, 3G, Wi-fi, LTE
Devices and machines have their own IP addresses and can independently
communicate with a central hub as well as with each other.

Table 2: Enablers for Industry 4.0

Apart from these enablers, it is imperative to have critical resources like human resources, enabling
infrastructure and the right legal and regulatory frameworks in place. Technical standards are also a
good measure of the maturity of a technology and its application, and such efforts are underway with
initiatives like the International Standard for Metadata Registries. Another interesting debate is the
choice of open vs. closed systems. Since manufacturing has traditionally been a closed system, with
production systems rarely been discussed about outside the plant, the extent of usage of open source
is in question.

The Application
At the core of the application of Internet of Things in Manufacturing is the creative ways in which data
from sensors can be applied across all activities. With the advent of embedded sensors of all shapes,
sizes and sensory capabilities & mechanisms, deeper visibility and control of the whole process is now
feasible.

Seamless and Connected Operations

The ability of Internet of Things to deliver real-time data is changing the way production systems
communicate within themselves. The complexity in these systems inherently stems from the
dependencies within each other, and most wastages, delays and mistakes often happen because the
material or the information does not reach the right process at the right time. The Internet of things
not only solves these problems but also provides a way to proactively reconfigure systems based on
the situation.
= Machine status, maintenance issues,
Raw Material Orders
Transit details

Components/Sub-system orders;
Changes in product/engineering
Transit details

product flow, human resource status.

Change in incoming material stock;
Production orders; field complaints
Order status, transit details,

= Information within
Information In
Information Out

= Inventory levels, service levels, expiry

= Apps for usage

Upgrades & periodic maintenance
details; product information
Complaints, orders, returns

date of products
Failures and field complaints
Order status, transit details

Figure 4: Connected Operations

Better Operations Visibility

The Internet of Things, along with the plant network provide better visibility across all the operations
of the company. It leads to increased automation and reduces variation due to human involvement.
With the help of PLCs, both measurement and control in real time are possible. This would play an
important role in sectors like automotive, where traceability of not just the final product but also the
components which are assembled into it is required to be implemented and stored for specified
periods. The same data can also be shared with suppliers in order to improve their turnovers.
Illustrated below is an example of how a software company, EMI is implementing an Operations
Intelligence Software, for improving manufacturing operations.

Figure 5: Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence Software and its key characteristics

Robust and Optimized Shop floor Asset Management

Though most companies have been implementing asset management activities, the ability of machines
to now intelligently send and receive information has changed the extent to which proactive plans can
be based around them. In many cases, configuration setting as well as troubleshooting is automated,
thus reducing the burden of the Engineering and the maintenance departments as well as their need
to rely upon the equipment provider to attend to such activities. Upgrades can also be done in situ.
These capabilities are in fact, enabling more and more machine makers to move from segregated
product and service models into integrated revenue models, which also integrated them tighter into
the manufacturing companys supply chain. A similar example could be derived from the aerospace
industry where engine makers directly monitor aircraft engine maintenance and often attend to them
directly, in interaction with the end customers, the airlines.

Figure 6: Asset Management, Enabled by Industry 4.0

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The Transformation
Based on their discussions about the existing state of the plant as well as the potential benefits that
the application of smart manufacturing practices could provide to it, both Dinesh and Devaraj feel that
this plant is a fit case for evolution to Industry 4.0. Dinesh is committed to seeing this project through
fruition and is sure that the top management will buy into his ideas to make this a pilot factory of the
future. At the same time, he also needs to energize and educate his employees in order to jointly
achieve their goals of making this an ideal plant. Devaraj and Dinesh agree on a model of consulting
which Devaraj will provide for the plant, in the upcoming 6 months, which he feels is a reasonable
amount of time required in order to execute this project. Devaraj outlines the following broad steps
for an Internet of Things Strategy.

Figure 7: Steps to Initiate a Smart Factory

Devaraj emphasizes the need for access to personnel and information from different functions. He will
also need to talk to Dineshs enterprise, including his customers and suppliers. Devaraj will also suggest
modifications, if required to the flow of products to the supply chain. He will also chalk out a product
strategy which will make the use of sensors an integral part of the product architecture. With these
activities, Devaraj is confident that Dineshs plant will truly make a move towards being a Factory for
the future.

Devaraj works for Cyient; Dinesh could be working for you !

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