The ‘Smart Enough’ Factory

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Presenters: Dr Steve Dowey, Technology Manager, Sutton Tools

Description: There are shared global challenges to the adoption of Industry 4.0 that affect businesses on all steps of the digital journey.  These are cost of implementation, a shortage of skilled employees, and a concern about security.  Although these problems are global, the solutions need to be local and targeted.  The ‘Smart Enough’ concept uses a data driven manufacturing and management approach to enable the promised benefits of IoT and Industry 4.0 for companies that might be struggling with implementation.  Dr Dowey will share and demonstrate the technology that is deployed at Sutton Tools for its take on Lean IoT.

Takeaways:

Smart Enough is:

• Management data driven - enables transparency and immediacy of processes.
• Lean.
• Leaves control and action to the experts and systems. Feedback loop is closed by the operator / manager.
• Uses micro-service architectures. Complements but doesn’t need an Enterprise Service Bus or SOA.  Works with legacy systems.
• Applying a lightweight sensor network overlay onto existing systems, leveraging web technology, RAD tools and open source.

About the presenter: Dr Steve Dowey is the Technology Manager at Sutton Tools and a Senior Research Fellow at RMIT University working with the Australian Defence Materials Technology Centre. His current projects include ‘Additive Manufactured Tooling’, ‘Tooling for Robotic Applications’ and applied ‘Industry IoT’ in collaboration with DMTC.  Steve’s Industry 4.0 focus is on the ‘The Smart Enough Factory’, where the issues of legacy systems (cost), security and STEM skills are addressed to ensure the benefits of Industry 4.0 can reach the Australian SME.