Manufacturers are increasingly turning to software-defined manufacturing (SDM) – a technology model in which manufacturing software and hardware are decoupled - to substantially optimise product design and production.
BMW i Ventures’ recent investment in software-defined manufacturing specialist, Bright Machines is just one indication of the potential large manufacturers see to substantially optimise product design and production through this new technology model.
Manufacturing today is defined by increasing product variability and shorter product development and production cycles. For example, the number of combinations of options for the BMW 6 series was 33 times greater in 2015 than in 2008. And Volvo estimates it will have halved the time between the design and start of production of a new car model by 2020 (compared to 2012 level).
The speed with which manufacturers can reconfigure the production to a new run and thus avoid costly machine downtime – which some estimates put at $1.3 million per hour - and expensive inventory storage is critical to maintaining profit margins.
One hurdle manufacturers face is that manufacturing equipment has historically not been designed to deal with a high level of product variance. Manufacturing machines, including industrial robots, have typically required expert programmers working with code specific to individual manufacturers and machines. Once set up, machines have traditionally been expected to continue doing exactly the same task. This remains the case for some processes, but product variability has led to a much higher need to re-configure a machine within a relatively short timeframe.
In robotics, installation and integration into a production cell are estimated to account for up to two-thirds of the overall cost of an industrial robot. The software that instructs the robot’s physical movements is traditionally deeply entwined with the robot hardware that executes the movements. This means that a robot programme for drilling 3mm holes in a metal plate cannot be simply re-installed on a different manufacturer’s robot even if the new robot is supposed to carry out exactly the same task. In addition, manufacturing machines have not been integrated - so a CNC milling machine cannot ‘tell’ a grinding robot that it needs to grind an extra 1mm off a part for example.
This is changing, as machines become easier to re-purpose, and as they become increasingly networked. First, robot programming has become easier, thanks to more intuitive user interfaces, and technology that enables the robot to part-programme itself by registering motion through hand-guiding by an operator. Second, a concept called software-defined manufacturing (SDM) is enabling far more flexible and faster programming not only of individual machines, but also of entire production processes.
In SDM, hardware and software are de-coupled; with the aim of ensuring that machines can be networked and configured quickly, and that code is re-usable across different machines.
SDM offers four main benefits:
Automotive manufacturers are probably furthest ahead in fully implementing SDM. But smaller manufacturers are also taking steps. A German timber manufacturer, for example, has integrated an industrial robot into a production process for producing wooden frames. The robot installs metal studs into the wooden frame and receives information in real time about which stud to remove from which collection station and where in the frame to place it.
Graph: © A. Verl, ISW University of Stuttgart
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