The Road to Intelligent Business

At the end of 2015, an event was held which was jointly organized by the Austrian Embassy in Slovakia and the Slovak-German Chamber of Commerce (SNOPK).

The event was designed primarily for suppliers to branches of industry and the topics discussed were mainly manufacturing automation and digitization processes. For those of you who could not attend, we would like to draw your attention to the mini report in the ATP Journal, prepared by the editor in chief Anton Gérer.

Apart from summarizing the supporting information, it also mentions the final panel discussion which was attended by representatives of the ANASOFT APR, spol. s r. o., Continental Automotive Systems Slovakia, s.r.o., and the president of the Association of the Automotive Industry, Juraj Sinay.

As part of the conference, the ATP Journal addressed our colleague Peter Bílik, who in ANASOFT holds the position of EMANS Solution Designer and requested him for his views on the following questions:

1. What do you think defines the preparedness of manufacturers of industrial automation and enterprise IT for the Industry 4.0 strategy?

All the technologies that are necessary for the implementation of the Industry 4.0 strategy are currently available and already widely and practically used and tested in different solutions. The question of readiness is thus based more on the ability to offer solutions that for a relatively low investment directly bring clear added value or eliminate waste in production.

We recommend our customers start with simple digitizing of production monitoring, the main benefit of which is the more accurate and faster retrieval of information on production.

The basic prerequisite for the implementation of a communication interface between production facilities, automation components and enterprise IT systems, however, is the creation and acceptance of common standards. That means a whole range of rules from the unification of a “vocabulary” of terms, to the definition of data structures, to specifying the format and means of communication. In this area, therefore, in our company we try to popularize existing initiatives such as ISA-95, ISA-88, ISA-106, OPC-UA standards etc.

2. Have you picked up any signals from your customers that in the foreseeable future they are planning to use the advantages of digital business (or any of the technologies such as the internet of things, big data etc.)?

From our customers, we have picked up signals about the need for the benefits of the digital business. This subject is very current, if only because businesses are looking for more opportunities to increase their efficiency, quality and safety. And from a certain limit it is almost technically impossible to perform the collection and processing of information only on paper or using various custom solutions in MS Excel. Successful businesses realize that their success is based mainly on their know how – the way their production is organized and managed, and their ability to continuous improvement.

In production, there is a rule about the speeds of different types of flow. Material flow always overtakes the flow of finance. The flow of information overtakes the flow of material. If there are ever higher demands for accelerating the flow of material (JIT delivery, personalization products, shortening of product life cycle) then there is a proportional pressure to accelerate the information flow. It’s no longer enough to have information more quickly and more accurately, managers expect that the software will also offer information on likely next developments.

You can read the whole article in the ATP Journal (in Slovak)

If you want to know more about the possibilities for the advantages of digital business for your company, don’t hesitate to contact us. We will be pleased to discuss this subject with you in person