Siveco’s insights on smart manufacturing – Feedback from the World Manufacturing Convention in Hefei
On May 25-26th, a Siveco team of Maintenance 4.0 specialists, headed by Managing Director Bruno Lhopiteau, attended the World Manufacturing Convention, a major industry event held in Hefei, Anhui province. For more on the event, see the original announcement. Under the theme “Shaping the Future of Manufacturing”, the summit gathered government and industry leaders for two days of seminars, panel discussions and one-to-one meetings. Siveco took part in two split sessions “The digital enterprise: creating the greatest competitive advantage from IOT, Advanced Robotics and Artificial Intelligence?” and “Investment priorities for smart manufacturing”. The Siveco team also held various meetings with several Hefei-based manufacturers looking at adopting 4.0 technologies in their plants, as well as with a few potential business partners.
From Siveco’s perspective, there were three main takeaways from the conference:
Predictive maintenance a “low-hanging fruit” of Industry 4.0, but limited knowledge of the discipline available
During the course of the two panel discussions, Predictive Maintenance was quoted many times as a “low-hanging fruit of Smart Manufacturing”, providing potentially high returns for relatively low investment. It was notable however than none of the speakers was able to provide any concrete example of such a project. Instead, the usual media stories of robots, artificial intelligence and smart glasses were used as illustrations. While it is very encouraging to see maintenance so prominently featured at the event, there appears to be little knowledge available on the subject among 4.0 experts. Siveco brought to the meeting a wealth of experience and many references, some of them located in Anhui province, where the event was held: Baosteel Gases operates an industrial gas plant in Hefei, using state-of-the-art Siveco technologies based on Coswin 8i and bluebee® to run its operation and maintenance, Saint Gobain Pipelines’ Maanshan manufacturing base has been a Siveco client for over 10 years, first computerizing their maintenance during the construction of a new blast furnace and later extending the system to the entire site, Chemical producer Anhui BBCA & GALACTIC Lactic Acid Company Limited (B&G) saw rapid improvement in plant reliability thanks to implementing Siveco’s maintenance management solutions to trace and analyze faults, and Automotive supplier Magneti Marelli in Wuhu uses Coswin in two plants, to manage its maintenance in line with the company’s World Class Manufacturing principles.
Chinese companies, more agile than MNCs, can benefit more from 4.0 technologies and quickly become leaders
While multinationals benefit from a long history, best practices built over decades, and early computerization (including maintenance systems since the 1980s), these strengths may have become a legacy. It is more difficult for multinationals to adopt new disruptive technologies, as their mature IT infrastructures bring multiple constraints, and to alter their business processes, as for examples workers may feel new that technologies may threaten their jobs (in fact reducing headcount is sometimes one of the goals of the technology project). The opposite is true of Chinese firms, who often offer a “blank page” to be written with best practices driven or guided by technologies. Chinese workers usually welcome new technology in the workplace, source of learning opportunities and motivation. This matches Siveco’s own experience with mobile technology, widely accepted by Chinese firms, but met with countless objections from multinationals. The case of joint-ventures is often telling: the international partner is often reluctant to implement new technologies (“our Chinese team is not yet ready for it”, “even in our home country we do not use such technology”) and face difficulties to budget such investment, while their local counterpart usually shows enthusiasm, a deeper understanding of the value (“technology as a catalyst for change”, “best practices through technology”) and may as a result be ready to fund the necessary mix of expert consulting and technology. In Siveco’s opinion, the Chinese government plays a leading role promoting the use of technology as a tool to optimize operations.
The central place of the worker in Industry 4.0
Finally, the place and role of the worker were highlighted many times during the conference. Fears and media hype about replacing workers by robots hides the true challenge, in China at least, that of the existing shortage of skilled workers. The smart plant may require ever more advanced skills from engineers and technicians. This was the subject of previous Siveco articles for many years already – for example “The Rise of the Robots, a Maintenance Nightmare“, written in 2011, still relevant today. Many speakers voiced a similar opinion, explaining how 4.0 solutions should be designed for humans. Siveco’s experience is also that 4.0 technologies can serve as training tools to improve workers’ skills: the Siveco bluebee® mobile solution “for the worker of tomorrow” was initially designed to help operation and maintenance technicians in their daily work, by providing structured information, as and when needed (when reporting a fault for example or reporting an abnormal meter reading), and reducing their admin workload (such as filling in paper forms). Similarly our back-office maintenance management solution was designed to guide users through the principles of the ISO 55000 Asset Management standard (since May 2017 also a Chinese standard under the name GB/T 33172) and more generally best management practices.
Playing a role in China 2025
Siveco has been a strong advocate of the key roles played by Maintenance, Asset Management, Risk Prevention to support this fourth industrial revolution and the development of the Chinese industry as part of the “Made in China 2025” plan. With over 30 years of history in Europe helping large manufacturing groups in various industries (including Airbus, Areva, Kraft Food, Naval Group, Safran, etc.) – to use IT solutions to optimize their assets, Siveco set up its first China office in 2004, established a local R&D center dedicated to mobile and IoT technologies in Shanghai 2008 and created links with leading local universities. In 2018, 850 client sites use Siveco’s Maintenance 4.0 solutions in China (such as Arkema, Saint-Gobain, Baosteel Gases, Capital Water, COSCO Shanghai Shipping, Hanwha Chemicals, Sinopacific) and the company is cooperating with Chinese companies on Belt & Road projects all over Asia and Africa. As a pioneer in this field in China since 2004, Siveco has had the chance to witness, to take part in, several phases of modernization of the Chinese industry. This unique history explains how Siveco is able to advise companies on their 4.0 initiatives and to deliver tangible results through digitalization.
We take this opportunity to thank the organizers of the World Manufacturing Convention and all participants who came to meet our 4.0 team during the event. Do not hesitate to contact us for your Smart Manufacturing, O&M 4.0 or Maintenance 4.0 projects at info@sivecochina.com.
