Manufacturing Survey

[agujr1]

Hi all,

I am a fourth year Engineering student working on my final year thesis and am conducting a study on the manufacturing processes followed by different organisations, as well as the current understanding of Industry 4.0 in the manufacturing sector. It will be of great assistance to me if you could please spend 10 minutes of your time completing a short survey for me regarding these issues, as it will aid me in collecting data for my thesis.

The Data collected from the survey will be kept anonymous, and any private information disclosed will not be used.

The survey can be found here ( Understanding the Opportunities and Challenges of Industry 4. Survey )

Thank you so very much for your time and help

Regards
Agujr1

 

[Gordon B. Clarke]

Am I the only one that's never heard of Industry 4.0?

Industry 4. - Wikipedia

 

[JNieman]

Am I the only one that's never heard of Industry 4.0?

Industry 4. - Wikipedia

Do you not read precision machining / manufacturing trade mags?

Can't open a single publication of MMS or Machine Design or without seeing a reference to either Industry 4.0 or the IIoT.

 

[Oldwrench]

I know it is currently fashionable in the university environment to imagine the cloud as a new industrial revolution, but fair warning: you will not find many people actually active in business with time to waste on this.

 

[JNieman]

I know it is currently fashionable in the university environment to imagine the cloud as a new industrial revolution, but fair warning: you will not find many people actually active in business with time to waste on this.

Yea, just replace "internet of things" with "intranet of things" and now it's realistic. The idea of having a much more openly accessible machine interface that allows different machine supplier products to talk to each other is pretty big. Just look at Okuma's "Partners in THINC" where you can have remote data tracking and automation from ordering tooling whose demands come from your ERP system upon job entry, to your machine tool controller, your offline tool setter information which goes automatically into the machine, to in-process inspection data usage, robot integration with production, packing and inventory control.

 

[Oldwrench]

...remote data tracking and automation from ordering tooling whose demands come from your ERP system upon job entry, to your machine tool controller, your offline tool setter information which goes automatically into the machine, to in-process inspection data usage, robot integration with production, packing and inventory control.

And here we got rid of ERP to reduce order response time, which seemed to work really well. What was I thinking? Maybe the constant and unending data entry to support that system you describe (do I err in thinking it was satirical?) really IS more profitable than paying people to make parts. I bet a 4th year student or his professor could tell me...

 

[JNieman]

And here we got rid of ERP to reduce order response time, which seemed to work really well. What was I thinking? Maybe the constant and unending data entry to support that system you describe (do I err in thinking it was satirical?) really IS more profitable than paying people to make parts. I bet a 4th year student or his professor could tell me...

I think it depends a lot on the software and how it's used. It can be a real pain in the dick sometimes, for sure. I and another guy here are setting up an internal webpage that'll communicate to our ERP database to move some things out of E2 because... E2 is a pile of shit, if you ask me. Fucking hate it. But it's mostly user interface. So we're taking that part away from it. We still want/need it for data tracking and generating documents, and job routing and such. But entering the data retards us. Even with that in mind, we still get from P.O. to Floor in hours, including a few stops through the office, when necessary. Then it's a matter of waiting for the material to get here the next morning off the Alro truck or Mc Carr or w/e. Or if it's customer-supplied, then we're in business right away. Our number of overhead employees in the office is lower than most shops in our area; significantly so.

Long story short - I find most ERP software is robust and useful, but almost always suffers from an extreme lack of performance speed and friendly UI. Not insurmountable, though.