7 Factory Automation Challenges That Mitsubishi Electric's "e-F@ctory" Solutions Can Address in India

India holds the 30th rank on the World Economic Forum’s global manufacturing index. With the boost in domestic and foreign investment, consumer demand and government initiatives like ‘Make in India’, the country is expected to become the fifth largest manufacturing country in the world by 2020.
 

However, as the world progresses faster towards the fourth industrial revolution, there is an increasing pressure on the Indian manufacturing industry to be ready for the changes that it will bring. Organizations would be required to do things in real-time with flexibility and efficiency in order to gain a competitive edge in the coming years. Today, factories need to be smart, intelligent, connected and collaborative in terms of their people, equipment and processes from end-to-end. It calls for an amalgamation of manual and digital production.
 

This can be achieved only through streamlining production operations through automation while lowering the total cost of ownership. However, the scope of automation is no longer limited to computerization and digitization. Automation and various technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing have changed the face of automation. They will play a dominant role in the way factories operate from shop-floor to top hierarchy. While factory automation in India needs a serious makeover, the deployment of new technologies and processes is capital intensive. Moreover, organizations require thorough expertise in tackling deployment in the initial stage and then maintenance afterwards. So, the idea of quality mass production by reduction in time, cost, human involvement and wastage is rendered futile.
 

Realizing these problem areas of the Indian manufacturing industry, Mitsubishi Electric has conceptualized e-F@ctory solutions that enable advanced factories. A leading manufacturer of electrical and electronic products including factory automation systems, Mitsubishi Electric has designed this solution with an aim to reduce production costs, right from development and manufacturing to maintenance. This solution utilizes advanced information technologies to optimize factories and support production systems of the future.
 

e-F@ctory solutions links the shop-floor directly to the information technology system. It gives visible control of processes to help organizations monitor the workings of the factory from top to bottom from a central point in real-time. This ‘visualization’ provides an eagle-point of view of the entire factory landscape like an information map.
 

With the help of e-F@ctory solutions, a manufacturing plant in India can overcome the following seven challenges:

1. Increased lead time

2. Low operating rate

3. Difficulty in the creation of a production plan

4. High energy cost

5. Inefficient system

6. Accumulative rejects due to quality issues

7. Delayed status reports
 

When these challenges are addressed, the manufacturer gets visibility in ‘production’ as well as ‘energy’. As the operation rate improves, lead time reduces, production planning and management optimizes, there is a significant improvement in productivity and product quality. The increased production value results in energy usage control and safety of employees and equipment. This, in turn, is critical for visibility and co-existence of the organization in the community/environment.
 

In a nutshell, e-F@ctory solutions substantially improves quality, work schedules and productivity by creating deep vertical data integration from shop-floor to the enterprise. In order to deliver this solution effectively, Mitsubishi Electric has developed an extensive factory automation product line-up and an e-F@ctory Alliance consisting of key partners that deliver value throughout the value chain

The demand for factory automation solutions is expected to increase over the next few years in India as the manufacturing sector seeks reliable and cost-effective ways of production that result in waste minimization. While factory automation can’t happen overnight, solutions like e-F@ctory can bring a systematic change at the right pace for manufacturing organizations in India.