It feels a little like putting on airs to call Smart Manufacturers a “documentary” series, maybe “mini-documentary” would be more appropriate, but we tried to follow the classic broadcast investigative journalism format by way of having some direction for the project right out of the gate.

We had four episodes planned and have four episodes released but no cadence set for a fifth episode just yet. It therefore made sense to take a look back at the series, what we learned and from whom.

Your erstwhile senior editor for technology therefore took over the Great Question Podcast yesterday to produce a highlights show with some clips from each episode. You can read the full transcript over at Plant Services so I won’t repeat it here, rather I’ll just grab some highlights.

Talking 5G with John Deere

For our first episode I toured John Deere’s storied Waterloo Works plant in Waterloo, Iowa, and discussed the facility’s private 5G cellular network. Along the way we had a good breakdown of WiFi technology’s benefits and limitations to help explain why 5G is a superior choice for Deere.

“There are really a couple big advantages that I see in using the WiFi over some of the existing Ethernet that we have inside manufacturing plants,” said Jason Wallin, chief architect at the Waterloo Works plant.

“The first one is the cost associated with the Ethernet is very, very expensive. Secondly, it is very, very inflexible, meaning you can't move it 10 feet to its next location without disassembling that cable. and then installing new cable to be able to support that run,” Wallin said.

What I found most interesting from the story were the workforce challenges related to deploying a private cellular network.

“We think about the skill sets that it takes to manage these types of networks in a manufacturing environment, that's a strong understanding of a manufacturing OT environment. It's an enterprise networking focus in how we think about segmentation and division, and then also how we manage the cellular networks.

“That is an almost impossible skill set to find. So because of that, we really found folks that had two out of those three, and then we upskilled them in the final area that they had to be able to build well-rounded individuals that understood all three levels of those expertise. And that's kind of how we dealt with that. That's how we dealt with the fear of the unknown in running our own cellular networks,” said Wallin.

Hexagon Built Their Own MES

For our second episode I visited Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence’s plant in Kingstown, Rhode Island. The company develops its own manufacturing execution system, or MES, rather than go with off-the-shelf options.

While I don’t expect many manufacturers to embrace the time and cost of developing a custom MES, the reasons why Hexagon made the choice covers the gamut of decisions a manufacturer has to make when deciding whether to adopt MES systems at all.

I had two chief takeaways from this story. First, why preparing to adopt an MES is worth it even if you never adopt the software.

“We had to really understand our processes extremely well. In addition to having the benefit of having the MES in place when you're done, you have now gone through a journey where you've looked at your processes so deeply that you've made improvements. 

“So that in itself makes you more efficient, right? The tool will, in the future, continue to allow you to make changes, but the initial impact of getting into your processes, making improvements, is something that anybody can do, with or without an MES system, and is a very valuable exercise,” said Steve Ilmrud, Vice President at Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence.

Second, if you develop your own MES, you’re on the hook for delivering customizations and being responsive to operators’ needs.

“Did we have to be more sensitive to feedback because we built our MES versus had we purchased one? I think we had to be more responsive. I think you always have to be sensitive to feedback and understanding what that is. 

“The difference is when you purchase something, it's a lot easier to say, well, I can't affect that, or it's something else, whereas also a pro and a con is that the answer is “I can affect this. We can do something about it. We're the owner of it.” So I think the sensitivity is the same, but you own the responsibility and the action more so, which makes it more challenging,” said Ted Coppa, director of business operations at Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence.

Brownfield Redevelopment and Social Responsibility

Our third episode was the most unique of the three for the ESG angle. Battery manufacturer Viridi renovated part of a huge campus built by General Motors in 1923 in East Buffalo, New York. Viridi CEO Jon Williams explained why brownfield sites are actually desirable.

“I mean, this is a 42-acre campus that would have been vacant. It has sewers, it has gas lines, it has power lines, it has paving. It's surrounded by city streets. I have a police department down the street, I have a fire department on the other block. I have a community center, I have schools, I have churches. All of those community assets now have more usage because you have a couple hundred people working on this site and hopefully becomes a couple thousand,” said Williams.

On the engineering side, Viridi installed a pair of automation systems that dropped the manufacturing time for the company’s primary energy storage solution from 40 hours to 20 minutes, a pretty incredible change.

On the ESG side, Williams also chose the GM facility for its proximity to a community that needs more employment opportunities. He went so far as to co-found a non-profit called Green Force to help prepare new employees for a career in manufacturing.

Jeff Conrad, executive director of Green Force, spoke to us about how Viridi has maintained an 80% operator retention rate.

“We had people standing in line waiting to apply. I think there's two reasons for that. I think there's one, the first reason was the pastors and their influence within the community. But I also feel that Viridi is really located in a place where people want to work, but they also want to work in their neighborhood. 

“We have so many manufacturers in Western New York that are outside and maybe two, three buses away from this community. And so this was something new where they could literally walk to work,” said Conrad.

Robots Rule the Roost at LG’s Clarksville plant

Lastly, for our fourth episode we toured LG’s vertically-integrated washer and dryer plant in Clarksville, Illinois, to discover why the World Economic Forum named the plant a Lighthouse facility in 2018.

The answer: automation. In addition to traditional robot arms the plant boasts and impressive conveyor system for intra-plant component transport, six-axis robot arms and vision systems.

The automative guided vehicles (AGVs) or autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) were everywhere on the shop floor in the Clarksville plant.

“Well, I would say the most transformative technology that we applied at this factory would be our AGV and AMRs. We operate at a very fast rate. Our dryers operate at 11 seconds, our washing machines at 13 seconds. So we need very little lead time of moving material from one location to the other. 

“Utilizing our AGVs and our AMRs allow us to move that material seamlessly throughout with very little idle time or loss at our production processes,” said Charles Lonergan, manufacturing manager at the Clarksville plant.

I also found it interesting that the growing AMR fleet (LG is gradually replacing the less flexible AGVs) drives development of the plant’s 5G network. It’s a fairly perfect example of why manufacturers may need to upgrade to 5G in the future.

“There's different use cases for each one of the connectivity processes. For our AGVs, for example, and our AMRs, they're moving throughout our factory. So the handoff between each connection point is very important to make sure we don't have any data loss, transfer loss when it's moving throughout the factory. So those ones right there, we absolutely need to be able to use our 5G network to reduce that loss in productivity,” said Lonergan.

Four Episodes, For Now

We hope this article inspires you to give the series a try. Your feedback plays a huge role in deciding how we develop Smart Manufacturers. Thanks for supporting the series and we’ll keep our eyes out for potential fifth episodes!