June - 20208 MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY INSIGHTSTechnology Inclusions for Your Manufacturing ToolboxBy Paul Susalla, Corporate Manufacturing Technology Advancement Director, Parker Hannifin Corporation [NYSE:PH]This is a very exciting time to be in Manufacturing! Manufacturing Engineers' toolboxes are expanding everyday with new technologies and possibilities for greater efficiency and capability. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, or what some are calling Industry 4.0, is bringing all kinds of tools to bear on all processes in our industrial world. It used to be that only very large companies could take advantage of the latest technologies due to cost, limited availability, and the need for continuous development as they were implemented. Today, the suppliers of these critical technologies have more robust, user friendly solutions at costs that enable even small to medium size enterprises to employ. The next step in embracing this revolution is making sure that Manufacturing Engineers are exposed to and educated on what is possible.At Parker Hannifin we are re-architecting our organizations for Information Technology and Operations Technology to take full advantage of these latest opportunities. Historically this has been a stumbling block for industry. The lines of demarcation and corporate policies hinder the adoption of solutions requiring on-floor data and back office information to mix fluently and create optimal solutions. Data-Driven Manufacturing (DDM) can enable increased optimization and productivity proportionally with connectivity and data accessibility.With the complexity of operations, taking Lean to the next level requires taking advantage of analytics and processors to crunch the data and present the meaningful minority to the team. It is, and has always been, extremely valuable to have the operations personnel comb through, chart, and analyze the production data to keep quality and productivity high. The increasing amount of data available has surpassed the ability for completely manual efforts. It is more efficient to have computers analyze the data and point to the critical areas where operations should review and take action. Setting up that process and linkage to action properly is now more important than ever to keep that tight-knit connection.So what tools should be included in your toolbox?Robotics: Low unemployment today has created a situation of not having enough qualified applicants to fill job openings. Robotic automation, both collaborative and traditional industrial, provide an opportunity to mitigate this issue. More and more, employees are seeing this as less of a threat and more of an opportunity to avoid the jobs they do not like with the ability to do more interesting and complex work. IN MY OPINION
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