Predictive

Factories:
The Next Transformation
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By Prof. Jay Lee & Dr. Edzel Lapira

New approaches to predictive

maintenance offer manufac-
turers the promise of greater
transparency into the
performance and health of
essential plant equipment,
longer life for valuable produc-
tion assets, minimum
disruptions, and more competi-
tive factories of the future.
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Figure 

Evolution of
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taining high product-quality

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standards. In contrast to mass ManufacturingParadigms
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TPS is to produce few models
in low volumes, with produc-
tion triggered by customer-
HE GLOBALIZATION OF THE WORLD’S ECONOMIES IS DRAS- pull so that the manufacturer
tically changing the scale and landscape of today’s markets, challenging estab- creates only what has been
lished manufacturing strategies. Aggressive competition from emerging econo- ordered. This is also known
mies has already put a severe strain on local manufacturing sectors in devel- as just-in-time manufactur-
oped nations, which are being forced to undergo significant changes in order to ing. Similar concepts were in-
increase their competitiveness. troduced in other developed
These prevailing market conditions, to produce large amounts of standardized countries with the develop-
aided by advances in information, commu- units using assembly lines, as pioneered and ment of Lean principles and
nication, and other emerging technologies, popularized by Henry Ford. By utilizing in- Six Sigma techniques.2
are now spurring the next evolution in man- terchangeable parts, manufacturers could With the advent of comput-
ufacturing. We believe that the concepts minimize production costs, because one ers and equipment controllers
behind predictive manufacturing have an part could readily replace another. This is for early industrial robots and
important role to play in this next wave of an efficient manufacturing strategy, espe- machine tools in the 1980s, manufactur- tionality can be quickly adjusted. (Revised from NSF
ERC Reconfigu-
industrial transformation. cially in high-volume production of limited ers could provide increased variety and in- But while all these historical production rable Manufac-
models of a product. dividual customization at prices that were paradigms can still provide substantial ben- turing Systems
Report # )
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From Mass Production to By the late 1960s, the Toyota Production comparable to standard goods and servic- efits to manufacturers in certain market sec-
Predictive Manufacturing
System (TPS) was emerging as a response es. This approach was known as mass cus- tors, even the strictest compliance to any of

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istorically, the evolution of man- to the productivity lag between Japanese tomization, or flexible manufacturing, and these approaches does not guarantee that ...................
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ufacturing (Figure 1) has been and Western manufacturing sectors. The resulted in improved market share for those maximum benefits can be achieved. The ...................
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fueled by advances in automa- prime directive of TPS is to reduce costs by companies that successfully adopted a flex- key limitation across these paradigms is a “Labor is a
tion, information technology, instrumenta- focusing on quality and eliminating sources

Previous spread, Veer.com/ Baloncici

ible production model. lack of manufacturing transparency. major factor
tion, and sensing, as well as the formaliza- of waste that were prevalent in mass pro- The late 20th century and early 21st cen- Today, transparency is becoming increas- behind the mi-
tion of well-documented and structured duction, such as overproduction, waiting, tury saw the proliferation of new informa- ingly important, as it allows companies to
gration of man-
methodologies and techniques by success- transport, processing, inventory, motion, tion technology systems and the birth of so- quantify real manufacturing capability and
ufacturing
ful corporations such as Ford and Toyota. and defects. This entailed an intensive oper- cial media networks. These greatly affected readiness, minimizing the role of uncertain-
When demand for manufactured goods ations management effort in which process- back to North
the evolution of customer requirements, ty in production decisions.
and products soared after World War I, es are reviewed and measured to identify causing significant manufacturing impacts The fundamental problem is that these America,
mass production platforms were developed and eliminate sources of waste, while main- on innovation, quality, product variety, and traditional strategies tend to assume ideal particularly
speed of delivery. The commoditization of conditions in the factory—such as con- in cases where
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consumer goods and shorter product life- tinuous asset availability and sustained
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cycles from design to production forced optimal performance—each time an asset labor content
“A significant amount of industrial companies to reevaluate their manufac- is used. This, however, is never the case in can be reduced
turing strategies in order to quickly fulfill a factory environment. To overcome the through auto-
equipment is now outfitted with market demand. This led to the emergence problem, manufacturers must focus on mation.”
sophisticated sensor arrays capable of reconfigurable manufacturing systems bringing far greater transparency to their
that are designed to rapidly change a plant’s assets. This next phase in the evolution of
of capturing highly granular data structure, including its hardware and soft- production is becoming known as predic-
readings on asset performance.” ware, so that production capacity and func- tive manufacturing.
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 Feature/ Predictive Factories:The NextTransformation //"
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Predictive Manufacturing:
The Next Phase
T
here already exists a plethora of
advanced predictive analytic al-
gorithms that companies can har-
ness to achieve greater transparency across
the production floor. One area that lever-
ages these predictive algorithms is prognos-
tics and health management, or PHM. This
technique is an evolved form of the tradi-
tional manufacturing maintenance strat-
egy. It estimates the current health of plant
equipment, detects incipient failures, and
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Predictive manufacturing therefore pro-
“By making vides far greater visibility into the actual
the manufac- health condition of a production asset—or,
turing capabil- inversely, its state of degradation. It also
ity transpar- provides a valuable trajectory of machine
ent, plant and performance, and key insights into when
corporate and how a piece of equipment or a compo-
managers nent is likely to fail.
have the right This increase in transparency can lead to
information to a number of benefits for manufacturers, in-
cluding:
assess facility-
Cost reduction: Since there is clear infor-
wide overall
mation about the actual condition of the
equipment
equipment, maintenance can be planned
effectiveness only when it is needed (just-in-time mainte-
(OEE). nance), which maximizes the life and use of
a machine’s consumables and components.
Operational efficiency: Knowing when an
asset or its component is going to fail will
allow for better scheduling of maintenance
and production. This maximizes asset
availability and uptime. Since component
use is prolonged, mean time between fail-
ures (MTBF) is increased. With an accu-
rate fault diagnosis module, troubleshoot-
ing time and mean time to repair (MTTR)
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Figure 
are reduced, resulting in shorter unplanned
downtimes.
Data Transparency
Product quality improvement: Equipment Using PHM tools as part of an integrated platform to create
transparency through predictive manufacturing.
variability and drift can then be accounted
for in production process control, so that
product quality deviations can be mini-
mized, which avoids unnecessary rework-
ing, scrap, and excursions.
Big Data and Predictive
Manufacturing
A
significant amount of industrial
equipment is now outfitted with
sophisticated sensor arrays ca-
pable of capturing highly granular data on
asset performance. In addition, the increas-
ingly popular concept of the “Internet of
things,” whereby assets are connected us-
ing cost-effective networking systems and
advanced communication protocols and
adapters, has enabled engineering assets to
be easily tethered to manufacturing execu-
tion systems (MES) and enterprise resource
planning (ERP) systems.
These huge technological strides in
sensing and connectivity have allowed for
seamless data aggregation from various
measurement points within the production
facility. However, capturing huge amounts
of data in the form of product genealogy,
equipment sensor readings, and traceabil-
ity has resulted in an unprecedented flood
of information. This creates an enormous
challenge for companies trying to effective- ery, and clear decision recommendations tive maintenance—essentially repairing
ly manage the “Big Data” explosion and for users. Prognostics and health manage- a machine when it fails—may seem like
extract information quickly so that more- ment tools offer one such solution. the simplest option, but this approach is
informed decisions can be made within an clearly inadequate in a modern factory. As
ever-shrinking time horizon.3 PHM: An Evolved Approach throughput times have become increasingly
P
Big Data demands the development of rognostics and health manage- fast due to improvements in plant automa-
mechanisms for converting this engineer- ment (PHM) approaches are de- tion, unexpected breakdowns have become
ing data into useful information. Predictive signed to provide companies with prohibitively expensive and even cata-
manufacturing deals with this challenge a more objective assessment of the true strophic.
through a series of transformation process- condition of their engineering assets. While more recent preventive mainte-
es, including digitization, digestion, deliv- The traditional approach of reac- nance (PM) strategies may offer higher
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 Feature/ Predictive Factories:The NextTransformation /"/"
MANUFACTURING
LEADERSHIP JOURNAL ....................
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tenance and production personnel can then
defined attributes (speed, cost, ease of de- relationship management (CRM) systems,
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........................................ The actual data-to-information transfor- control and optimization.
........................................ avoid equipment failure so it does not in-
mation is performed by the PHM analytics By making the manufacturing capability
availability through time-based condition- terfere with planned production goals (see
tools, such as the Watchdog Agent devel- transparent, plant and corporate managers
ing/repair/replacement activities that pre- Figure 2).
oped at the Center for Intelligent Mainte- have the right information to assess facility-
clude unexpected downtime, this approach
PHM Tools in Action nance Systems (IMS). The data undergoes wide overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
also has two major disadvantages. First,

T
................. signal processing for filtering, outlier de- Also, with the use of such advanced predic-
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................. PM is an expensive program to maintain, he PHM process starts with the
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................. tection, conditioning, and, when applica- tion tools, companies can plan more cost-
especially if PM intervals are kept very data acquisition from the fac-
[] Koren, Y. ble, a domain transformation/translation. effective, just-in-time maintenance to ensure
and Ulsoy, A.G. tight. Second, although PM activities en- tory assets that the manufacturer Dr. Jay Lee is Ohio
“Reconfigurable
Health indicators, used to identify faults or equipment health over a longer period.
sure that components do not fail or exhibit wants to monitor. Using sensor technolo- Eminent Scholar and
Manufacturing degradation, are then extracted from the Finally, when sufficient historical health L.W. Scott Alter Chair
Systems.” Engineer- significant behavioral changes, there is no gies, various measurements such as temper-
ing Research Center processed data. information has been retrieved, this can be Professor at the Uni-
for Reconfigurable insight learned about the equipment’s ac- ature, pressure, force, and electrical signals
Machining Systems
Typically, the array of health indicators provided to the manufacturing equipment versity of Cincinnati,
tual degradation cycle that can be used to can be recorded. In addition, communica- and is the founding
(ERC/RMS) Report # this generates is too large to be efficiently designer for closed-loop lifecycle redesign,
,The University of improve its design. tion protocols such as MTConnect or OPC director of National
Michigan, Ann Arbor, manipulated by the deployment platform, and to help them improve the next genera-
Condition-based maintenance (CBM), (OLE-DB Process Control) enable users to Science Foundation’s
 or might not have sufficient quality for a tion of models. Industry/University
meanwhile, uses more-advanced sensor sig- capture signals from the controller and pro-
[] Nambiar, A.N. specific monitoring task—such as fault de- Cooperative Research
“Modern Manufac- nals to help detect the occurrence of a fault vide valuable contextual information. A More Predictive Future Center (I/UCRC) on
turing Paradigms tection, failure diagnosis, or performance

F
– A Comparison.” or anomaly, isolate the faulty component, At this point, the collected measure- Intelligent Mainte-
In Proceedings of
prediction. So, a dimension reduction, or rom the early mechanization of
and identify the failure mode. ments might be considered Big Data. The nance Systems (IMS).
the International feature selection step, may need to be per- production processes during the He is also a member
MultiConference of PHM is a natural extension of the CBM data must undergo some form of trans-
Engineers and Com- formed to retain only the relevant health Industrial Revolution, to today’s of the Manufacturing
approach. By trending degradation pat- formation before the manufacturer can Leadership Board of
puter Scientists, Vol. indicators. highly integrated and automated assembly
, IMECS , Mar. terns, it can predict, with some level of extract useful information and achieve as- Governors.
-, , Hong Then a manufacturer can quantify the lines, manufacturing has always been a vi-
Kong,  confidence, when equipment is going to set transparency. The transforming agent
performance of the equipment by statisti- brant industry with a dynamic ecosystem
[] Berkley, J. “Big reach failure conditions. With the use of is an integrated approach that consists
Data for Operations
cally comparing current health indicators of innovation. Over time, it has undergone
advanced predictive tools and algorithms, of an underlying deployment platform,
Intelligence.” Manu- with known baseline (good) health metrics. numerous transformations and innova-
facturingTransfor- manufacturing asset behavior is modeled PHM analytics, and a series of visualiza-
mation Blog. http:// If the current behavior is similar to the base- tions that have helped it adapt to continu-
www.apriso.com/ and tracked using a set of metrics known tion tools. The deployment platform can
line condition, the confidence value (CV) ously changing market demands.
blog///big- as “health value” or “confidence value.” Fi- be one implementation, or a combination
data-for-operations will be high. Alternatively, the CV will be low As the manufacturing industry now ap-
nally, prediction tools are utilized to infer of stand-alone, embedded, remote, or even Dr. Edzel Lapira is
when there is low correlation with the base- proaches an increasingly connected, digi-
when the machine is likely to fail. With such cloud-based implementations. The choice the associate director
line metrics, or the current health indicators tized, and information-rich future, compa-
information, a much higher level of manu- of deployment platform depends on the of the IMS Center, Uni-
show deviation from normal behavior. nies must equip tomorrow’s factories with versity of Cincinnati
facturing transparency is achieved. Main- application, environment, and other user-
When repeatable degradation patterns the latest and most advanced diagnostics ...................
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are observed, prediction algorithms can systems available in order to ensure maxi- ...................
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...................................................... during future usage. With the use of visu- mance from their assets, as they vie in ever-
“Prognostics and health manage- alization tools (radar chart, fault map, risk more competitive global markets.
chart, and health degradation curve), the The more predictive manufacturers can
ment, or PHM, estimates the proper health information can be clearly be about the health of the assets they use,
and easily conveyed to the right person. the more effective their operations will be,
current health of plant equipment, By allowing the extracted information to and the more competitive their factories of
detects incipient failures, and be accessible in existing ERP, MES, supply the future will become. M
chain management (SCM), and customer For more information visit: www.imscenter.net
predicts the next fault event.”
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