The Connected Future of Advanced Machining

Jim Anderton: If there's one word that defines technology in the first two decades of the 21st century it's connectivity. Now, the worldwide web, hand held devices and wireless networks, well, they've connected people in ways never imagined a generation ago.

Now, that's also true of machines, and in fact, manufacturing equipment was networked long before the invention of the smartphone. That connectivity however, was largely based on machine monitoring and centralized production control. Today the same technology that enables smart devices allows smart factories with production machinery now able to generate, aggregate and distribute incredible amounts of data that give production plants, large and small, real insight to part making on a second by second basis.

How is this industrial internet of things going to impact manufacturing going forward? Well, to help me answer that question I'm joined by Peter Strohm, Business Development Manager IoT at EMAG. Peter holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Material Science and Materials Technology from the University of Saarland.

Peter, welcome to the program.

Peter Strohm: Thanks for having me.

Jim Anderton: Peter, let's dive right into it. This is a fascinating subject. Everyone is talking about the industrial internet of things today, and machine tools were actually there years ago with networked PLCs and factory wide ethernet connectivity. But how are production machine tools changing with these new forms of connectivity? We used to think of connected machine tools as just process monitoring, flagging stoppages because of tool wear or breakage.

Peter Strohm: Yes, actually, this is very correct. So we did this a long time ago, like collecting the PLCs, and we were taking a look at the results maybe at the end of a shift, at the end of a day, or at the end of a week. But this was really on the very high surface level looking into the data. And these days we have more possibilities using, for example, algorithms with machine learning and artificial intelligence. And our focus today is really on networking the assets, everything around it, and find out how to really increase the productivity of these machines with taking everything we can into consideration.

That means, for example, looking at some values of the machine, detecting anomalies during the process, finding quality problems in real time, predicting possible down times of the machine coming along in order to prevent the machine from stopping by having the service guys in early and maybe able to distribute the spare parts in time. And I think what changed are really the possibilities you can do also with calculating power directly on the machine giving you new opportunities. But in fact, the tools were all there all the time, but we can now use it in a completely new way, I would like to say.

Jim Anderton: Peter, that's an interesting point. Even back to, well, to the primitive days of PLCs. When I was in manufacturing in automotive tier one space there was always a sense that there's more information locked in the machine that we can't access, or even if we could access it we don't really know what to do with it. So there was a gap between what the machine could deliver and what we could understand about what the machine was doing. Is that still there, that knowledge gap?

Peter Strohm: I don't think so. Today, I would say, for EMAG we can take everything out of the machine which the control knows. I mean, we know all the variables, we know how to access the drive data, maybe currents, power and so on. And we really like to say that we are more use case driven, so that means we do not want to take everything out of the machine, but we like to get in touch with our customer and find out what his actual application is. And if we understood what he's about to do we can find the right data we need in order to deliver the use case he needs, in order to improve whatever he wants.

Jim Anderton: You mentioned power, and I know that in some cases power can be a proxy for other things, tool wear or other process variables at this point. But historically, I think power was not really looked at as a parameter worth monitoring down there. How does that happen? What can power tell us?

Peter Strohm: It's different. You mentioned tool wear, so if you imagine a motor which is operating the machine, obviously if something is wrong with the axes it will get harder for the motor to, for example, move these axes. And this is something you can see in the power consumption of the motor, for example, and this is directly referred to wear and tear.

But what is also interesting these days is to monitor the power as a whole, because sustainability gets more and more important these days. You want to know, or you want to have a machine which is really energy efficient, and this is also getting important for the suppliers, the tier ones, the OEMs, because they need to know what the actual carbon footprint of whatever they produce is. And this will also include the machines very soon. And therefore it's not only important to have these values in order to detect something like wear and tear, but also to know what is the energy consumption right now. And maybe how to control it in a way that you can lower energy consumption of the machine by turning off motors you don't need at the certain point of time, for example.

Jim Anderton: That's an interesting point of view. I've seen many transfer lines where machines idle, but they spin and they stay spinning for a long time when they're not actually touching the part.

There's another aspect to power. You brought up sustainability, but historically in the machine tool world, I'm thinking 20, 25 years ago when I was very active in manufacturing. Power consumption was something which European manufacturers were very concerned about then. In North America, not so much. Very rarely would an individual actually even ask about the power consumption of a machine tool. Today, it's a different world. We're in a world now where in the American state of Texas, for example, there was a recent supply shortage and a dramatic spike in spot prices for electricity. So even the certainty of the price is perhaps not there anymore.

Do you think that in America, we're going to see an increased emphasis on things like efficiency, or these power issues you're talking about?

Peter Strohm: Most certainly. I think this is something slowly coming all over the world. I mean, we even see approaches like this in China these days, who did not seem to be so much concerned about power consumption in the early days like, I think U.S. was as well. So, I think on the one hand it is price driven definitely. And in Europe we are also seeing highly increasing prices for power, but it's also the thought of sustainability. And it's also, I think, driven by politics because you are having these guidelines that you cannot exceed a certain value of power consumption. You have to buy certificates for CO2 and so on, so I think these are all elements which influence this topic very much.

Jim Anderton: Peter, historically even relatively simple part making, a shaft, perhaps a simple gear, this would be a step that might involve roughing, finish machining, grinding, or lapping. There might be induction hardening in that stepwise process, all of which involved transfer from machine to machine. And of course the costs and variability that comes when you are setting up a part up again and again, and again. More and more we're seeing these functions incorporated inside a single machine, even metrology. We're seeing a situation now where we're measuring parts while they're still fixed inside the machine.

Is this a trend that's going to continue? Do you think that we're ever going to reach a point where we simply clamp a block of hard steel to a machine, close the door and come back, and there's a complex gear there?

Peter Strohm: That's a very interesting question. In the future, maybe yes. I think this is still quite a way to go. What we are doing at Emag is we are, for example, delivering complete production lines consisting of different technologies, like you mentioned previously. Also, including induction hardening. We also acquired recently a company who's actually doing metal welding in order to have a possibility to produce something which is pretty close to the final shape of the part we want to produce. So, I think there is definitely a trend going towards machinery which is more flexible.

I don't know if we will reach a point soon where we can just put a block of metal somewhere and we will get our final machine part there, but we certainly see approaches where production lines need to be more flexible. Maybe using robots which are able to not only put part to one machine, but to several different machines and you can attach them in different ways. And I think this fits with the way the world is developing right now, because we do not see so many projects any more where we have to produce 5,000 parts a day, which are exactly the same. Customers demand smaller machines which are more flexible. They want to change the amount of produced parts and the type of parts recently. So, I think there's definitely a trend there, but I think we are not quite there, what you mentioned before.

Jim Anderton: Peter, you brought up a very interesting point, which is more variability and smaller lot sizes in general. Historically, this has been the opportunity for small and medium sized shops that were not, of course, not configured to make a hundred thousand of a specific part, but were very happy to make 1,200 or perhaps 2,000. But at the same time, the smaller and medium size shops have historically lagged in technology because they didn't have the money that the large corporations did to buy the absolute latest. Is some of this new technology, is the cost now becoming approachable for those smaller and medium size shops? Can they play with this highly connected modern equipment?

Peter Strohm: I think when you're looking at connecting machines, this is something which would cost you today around €10,000 to €15,000 per machine for an EMAG. And we are not actually known for cheap prices so I think this is pretty affordable compared to our machine prices in general. And I think the important thing is not the cost of the solution, but what you get back out of it. And our customers are pretty much driven by when do I get a return on invest? And by increasing efficiency of the machine or decreasing down times you will get a return on invest on that very soon.

And we are not only playing in the field of visualizing things and supporting the machine operators in this daily business, but we are also focusing on new concepts how to control the machine. And this is actually something which helps pretty much to have machine operators who are maybe used to using an iPad, but not so much to tool machine, which are usually pretty complicated with their control interfaces. And this really aims to small and medium sized companies who are requiring more flexibility. And I think they will get a pretty fast pay off of these solutions because they will save up time and money for training, and they will have a flexibility they did not have before.

So I think, yes, it gets more and more affordable, and it will also reach more and more standard. And I think the more connected solutions reach the standard, the lower the prices will get and the more affordable, even more affordable, they will also get for the small and medium size companies.

Jim Anderton: Peter, one of the challenges those small and medium sized companies have with a high mix product where they're perhaps making only a couple of hundred of one part, or maybe even a few dozen of another one, is cycle time can be quick, but overall changeover can take time. So are those small and medium size shops, are they looking at the work holding problem? Are they thinking about overall cycle time in a holistic way? Because sometimes you can spend a lot of money and buy a machine that is lightning fast, but then give up that productivity advantage in how you handle the parts.

Peter Strohm: Also good question. I think we can help a little bit with software. We are thinking about how to support the operators in an optimal way. If they want to set up a new work piece, this can be something like you choose the new work piece you want to produce, and for example, your revolver is going in the right position to change certain tools. So this will be guided process through setting up a new work piece, which makes it more foolproof, which makes it easier to do, and which helps you on the time side.

But we also see it on a little bigger scale. So another product we offer is something which helps you to decrease set up times in general, by combining your tools, your parts, in an optimal way. That means, for example, if you know during the day you want to produce 12 different parts in different amounts and sizes, we can provide an algorithm who is checking what do we want to produce and which tools are needed for it. And then it will give you a proposal what is the optimum way to combine it, and that will bring down setup times dramatically because you have the minimum required amount of tool changes there. And this is also something one could look at, but it always depends on if this machine is really fully used during the whole day, or if they have time for the setup process. So, it's also a bit individual and different from company to company.

Jim Anderton: Now, the automotive industry is very important of course, globally for multiple reasons, and it's of course, especially in machining, machine tool world. And we are seeing that dramatic once in a generation shift, more than once in a generation, perhaps a century, to electric vehicles. In Germany, of course, leading the way, Volkswagen, major change. Tesla building a new plant in Brandenburg. Everyone is talking about electric. And there was a prediction that electrification would generate a much reduced demand for machine components.

Other experts say quite the opposite, that in fact, it's the need for efficiency, because of course, battery life issues mean that things like bearings, gears, rotating elements need to operate with less friction and with less wasted energy now than ever before. And that will create a new revolution in precision machining, precision gear, finishing. Others say that electric cars are quieter, which means things like noise in a gear set now are much more important to consider at the same time. Are electric vehicles... Is this an opportunity for this industry, do you think?

Peter Strohm: It is an opportunity definitely, but it's a challenge at the same time, I think. So when you look at electric cars, for example, at the motor there's almost no machine parts in the way we knew it before, so that's a dramatic decrease. When you, for example, think about turbo charges and so on you just don't have these parts anymore. When you take a look at the gears, for example, in the gear box, you see for fully electric vehicles, you see less gears than before, but for hybrid electric vehicles, for example, you have even more. We have 10 year automatic transmissions now, including electric motors and so on. So I think there are new parts. You also have rotors, rotor shafts, for example, that need to be machined for electric motors.

So there are the parts. I think the industry has to change. You need to change the portfolio. And from a point of view of EMAG, we are in the lucky situation that we are combining very many technologies so when it comes to you have to extra harden the parts you need to use more fancy high alloy materials, for example. We have the electrochemical machining which allows us to machine very hard steels and even other parts, like Inconel, known from aerospace. I think we have the technology, but I still think at the same time that the parts in general will decrease so we have to look for other opportunities. We have to look for also other customers where we can sell machine parts to.

And I really agree that this is a new challenge to precision, which is also good for EMAG because we are known for that. But I see also another trend, not only going from combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles, but I think vehicles in general will be lowered in numbers. When you think, for example, major companies like Daimler, they are slowly going away from selling cars and moving towards mobility. So if you think about a future where people are more sharing cars. I'm a little old fashioned. I really like possess my own car because it's also a hobby for me. But if you think at the new generation who are not so interested anymore in cars, and they say okay, if I need one, I'm going to share it with someone else. I think cars will also decrease in numbers in the future.

And when you look at China, there is the next challenge ahead, because I think they are trying to really get into the market in an aggressive way, like they never did before. They know they cannot cope with combustion engine vehicles with Europe and the U.S. but they really are far ahead when it comes to electric vehicles, and also holistic mobility concepts. And I think we will see a lot more of Asian brand cars in the future in Europe and also in the U.S. And this will be the next challenge for manufacturers known to us so far, because we don't even know maybe our customers from tomorrow because they are only starting to evolve. So, definitely a lot of challenges ahead.

Jim Anderton: Peter, you touched on materials, and you are a steel expert. Steel is a wonderful material. It's cheap. Put enough carbon in it and you can have a soft ductile core. You can case harden the outside and get a good wear surface. I mean, it's all these wonderful qualities. But we keep hearing about the need to reduce weight, increase durability, wear resistance, will steel or alloy steel still be the primary material for these mass production parts we're talking about, shafts, bearings, gears, or are we going to see a move to exotic materials in this area, do you think?

Peter Strohm: That's really an interesting question. I think it depends a little bit on the application. For example, if you take magnesium alloys, for example. They are pretty light, but also pretty expensive to produce. When you take a look at aluminum alloys, they look pretty nice, but usually they are heavier than steel alloys if they are not forged, but just machined in a conventional way. So, I think it really depends on the application.

When it comes to cars, we will see a lot more carbon fiber, I think. Maybe also, high strength aluminum profiles and stuff like that, but I still think that steel is going to play a major role in the whole topic. But I also think we are going to see a lot of new materials coming up in this field.

Jim Anderton: Peter, here in North America, I understand it's similar in Europe, there's a tremendous shortage of skilled people. Labor is a major issue for manufacturers everywhere. And this is surprising because we thought that with automation it would be the opposite effect, we'd have a surplus of skilled people, and we find exactly the opposite. It is very difficult to find a skilled machinist, or a skilled tool maker, or a skilled dye maker anymore. Automation has been hailed as the solution to this problem. Are we looking at a world now where the factory will have very few expert or skilled people in the factory anymore? Will this all be automated? Will robots be the future of this industry, do you think?

Peter Strohm: Actually, I made a podcast over that quite a while ago. I think the jobs will change in the future. I think we will see less machine operators being responsible for more machines, but we will also see new jobs, like data scientists and robotics experts, which does not solve our problem because we need skilled workers of different fields then. But I really think that these operational tasks, or loading, unloading a machine, that this will shift a lot over to robotics and automation also due to the fact that labor is very expensive in the countries we're talking about. And therefore I really think we are looking at the future with people of different skills there.

Jim Anderton: That's fantastic. Peter Strohm, Emag. Thanks for speaking with me today.

Peter Strohm: You're very welcome. Thanks too.

Jim Anderton: And thank you for joining us on Manufacturing the Future. See you next time.

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