Industry 4.0 is something which we will be hearing for the next few decades.
What sets this apart is few technology developments along with integration of software with hardware to automate and digitise a process related to manufacturing, processing or services.
What this does is reduce the human interface and provide a closed loop data for analysis and improvement of the said process.
As we know digitisation is not a new keyword, but closed loop digitisation is!
Now consider a part being manufactured, we already have digital monitoring systems which can provide accurate results in-line or off-line.
Now what if you can create a closed loop system using a software and computational methods?
This could open up a whole lot of savings to the process by immediately giving a feedback and any errors or dimensional/visual quality defects can be identified and the machine is taught to correct the path to give more accurate results!
Now that is something Mind-blowing, but possible today.
There are many processes in the industry which must go through a lot of rigorous testing and 100% inspection which took days and now could take few minutes extra.
Say, In manufacturing, today robots are being used for various activities like finishing, grinding etc. They are also being used for inspection as its easier than the human method!
Now what if you fix a scanner onto the robotic arm and create a closed loop feedback system so that the surface is scanned for the exact imperfections and the robot gets a feedback from the CAM software about the operation and the extent of process so that it can maintain quality?
What is a certain defect is inspected and the analysed data is fed back into the machine after correction factors being applied in real-time so that the corrections can be done in-line?
machine learning, predictive analytics, IoT, big data and cloud computing form the missing link to quality 4.0.
Now how India can benefit with this? Well, being one of the largest manufacturers for the world, consistency in quality and reliability will always play on us. We need to adapt this as like china to improve our supply chain and manage Just-in-time. Also, we are not as well known in our Quality standards as the western countries, and with quality 4.0 integration we can quickly bridge the gap.
Of course, the capex is always going to be a major factor, since there are only few integrators and suppliers globally, hence for MSMEs and large scale factories, frugal innovation would be the order of the day to reduce cost without compromising on the output.
So Quality 4.0 weaves the whole process to give us the desired results and this is what TIE is all about!
navariTIE 