Track: Manufacturing

From facial recognition tracking us, to AI taking over human work, to overall issues of data privacy, recent headlines have made much about all there is to fear from technology. In this panel, we take a step back to examine where – and if – that fear actually exists. Examining the results of a global survey, we will explore individuals’ feelings about the effects specific technologies have on their lives and careers – do they expect help or hindrance? The discussion will highlight survey results and engage with experts on technology, humans, and society to form a basis for understanding and a road map for managing technology anxiety (or enthusiasm!).

The notion of a connected worker as coexisting with smart connected machines is a topic that is gaining prominence across industry, especially in the context of Industry 4.0. With ubiquitous connectivity, smart miniature sensors, and AI, industries are now in a position to explore synergetic relationships between humans and machines that lead to improved workplace safety and productivity. Attend this session to learn how leading companies are successfully employing a connected worker offering to improve overall worker safety, productivity, and operations at their industrial sites. Panelists will discuss various aspects of an IoT-enabled connected worker and delve into challenges, current state of various technologies, and opportunities in topics such as co-bots and human machine interactions that lie ahead.

This session will explore how the worlds largest brewer, Anheuser-Busch InBevs, South African Brewery, subsidiary set out on an IoT initiative designed to allow them real-time intelligence on the location and condition of their cooler systems, across South Africa under challenging circumstances. Discussion will focus in on the elements of several strategic local and global partnerships that were put in place to ensure seamless, low cost connectivity that would work where-ever and when-ever required, enabling them to rapidly develop the solution and roll it out in the space of weeks. Hear how they achieved the requirements necessary, and are now able to identify cooler asset optimisation and potential maintenance tasks, amongst others to ensure efficiencies and cost savings.

Factories of the future are growing around the world. Every sector and industry has several examples of advancements implemented as pilots or rolled out at scale. When one decomposes the key elements of the Factory of the Future, one common denominator becomes clear – it a concept of Digital Twin. Digital Twin is an exact copy of a physical object or process. More precisely, it is “an evolving digital profile of the historical and current behavior of a physical object or process that helps optimize business performance.” Join this panel to hear the stories of experts who deployed digital twins for Industrial Automation of OEM factory lines, modeling nuclear reactors to predict precise performance / impact and other breath-taking examples of “Twins Revolution” in manufacturing.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have the potential to completely revolutionize manufacturing as we know it today. From operational gains in production efficiencies to unlocking new markets and sales opportunities, AI, when built correctly, has the power to transform how and where we do business. This panel will explore how leading manufacturers are integrating/expanding AI, Machine Learning, and IoT technology into their automation and manufacturing systems. We will discuss return on investments, strategies for integration, technology and manufacturing trends.

The value of driving 'AI & analytics to the edge' has been demonstrated over 'sensor to cloud', but this means deploying new processes, protocols and servers across the manufacturing floor. The challenge then becomes how to manage these new servers while maintaining data integrity, security and availability. Scaling from a small proof-of-concept environment, to a smart factory can challenge even the most willing manufacturer. Through collaboration between IT and OT teams, manufacturers have been able to standardize and deploy industrial grade IT infrastructure with proven IT management, ensuring scalability, security and manageability. Join this dynamic session to hear how a leading tools manufacturer, a global automotive manufacturer, and several other customers have overcome the PoC to production scaling challenges.

In industrial factory automation, the OPC Foundation's Unified Architecture (OPC UA) has fast become the universal interoperability foundation for structuring and accessing metadata and configuration of complex factory systems down to the smallest components, and for flowing state information and telemetry between the components of such systems and providing telemetry and process data into external business and control systems, either on the factory floor or in the cloud. The DIN 92222 standardization effort builds on this foundation and attempts to answer the question how the value proposition of 'product as a service' can be realized for all suppliers in the industrial equipment supply chain: How can the manufacturer of a sensor built into a drive built into a robot that is part of a production cell get access to live telemetry information from its product? How are telemetry streams structured? How are they routed and filtered and split? How are trade secrets protected?

This hybrid presentation/panel will examine multiple dimensions of smart factory deployment, based on the field experience of implementers and clients.  The session will cover the various starting points and approaches to deploying smart factory, across a variety of industries.  It will also draw upon perspectives from multiple organizational roles (IT, CFO, Operations) in the examination of value delivered and challenges faced. Join us for an overview of smart factory advances, followed by a expert panel discussion that includes representatives, with differing roles, of firms pursuing smart factory strategies.  

Digital Twin is a concept which develop in Product Engineering and is now more and more used also in other areas of the product lifecycle like in production or during operation of a product. Today this different digital twin are often created as silos with limited possibility to exchange data. The presentation will show how to solve this challenges and how integrated digital twins along the whole product lifecycle can be realized. The solution is based on the architecture of the International Data Spaces Association using the open source technology of FIWARE providing predictive maintenance services while ensuring data sovereignty. It will be explained how the Overall Equipment Efficiency is improved while at the same time the data sovereignty is increased.

If your major focus for the coming months and years is reducing labor costs, increasing factory throughput, and optimizing pricing strategies, you're not alone. These operational efficiencies have become business-critical for manufacturing companies who want to stay competitive in a market constantly challenged by workforce shortages, price wars, and customer expectations. This panel explores how real-time location systems can positively impact your manufacturing operations. Drawing from specific use cases as examples, participants will discuss how leading manufacturing organizations are experiencing both short-term benefits and ROI, as well as long-term transformation by leveraging RTLS.

This session explores how, with the application of Digital Twin/Thread technologies alongside traditional BIM models, TopHat and its partners have optimized the centuries-old housing market by building residences and commercial properties designed around people's lives and actual usage patterns. TopHat's pre-fab properties, which are sold to large real estate companies, are the world's first truly "intelligent homes", introducing smart manufacturing and Predictive Design into an industry ripe for disruption - a world-first for the housing market.

Industry 4.0 has begun and 5G is unlocking new possibilities - are you poised for success in the new era? In this session, you will learn to modernize operational technology (OT) through consolidated infrastructure and centralized application lifecycle management for your manufacturing floors as well as leverage AI through an Intelligent Edge Computing platform supporting easy on-boarding of data-science apps that use containers, functions with rich data and runtime services. You will hear about a successful real-world IIoT use case, deployed at Schneider Electric, to map the physical warehouses with digital twins and exploit the data with real-time insights to optimize various business processes in logistics.

Powering Android in the IIoT: Leveraging ML, AI for Improved Operational Outcomes and Device Life

Within the IIoT ecosystem, an integral part of Condition Monitoring is providing data that can be used for Predictive Maintenance (PdM). The advent of smart sensors and wireless networks now provides a new level of digital intelligence that allows companies to accurately monitor, track and share data about their assets in order to improve efficiency, reduce downtime and achieve greater cost savings. This presentation will explore the challenges of condition monitoring and predictive maintenance and how to overcome these challenges with scalable and secure long-range Bluetooth connectivity.