Elly Yates-Roberts |
This article was originally published in the Autumn 2019 issue of The Record. Subscribe for FREE here to get the next issues delivered directly to your inbox.
Industry 4.0 propels manufacturers beyond traditional measures of success, says Mike James, chairman of the board of directors at ATS Global. “Wins are what we look for in digital manufacturing,” he says. “Yet how do we define a win? Does it fit into the traditional manufacturing boxes of cost and quality? Or is it something more?
“Industry 4.0 says much more. It talks about environmental and social consequences. Today a company’s reputation correlates directly to its market image. That encompasses good governance and corporate social responsibility, but also that all-important mojo which is hard to win and still harder to keep.”
ATS helps achieve that mojo, for example in its work with an international aerospace manufacturer to create a best-practice manufacturing environment that increases production output. The customer wanted to allow outcomes and lessons learnt to be replicated across production lines at sites around the world.
Shop floor processes were integrated with the manufacturing execution system, enabling automatic capture of process data, increased part traceability and tracking of parts through the production process. ATS Bus was implemented to allow seamless data transmission between IT and operations technology worlds.
Now, the company can remotely monitor all the data exchanges carried out across ATS Bus to keep track of its system’s health and ensure all a specific environment’s needs are met. The end-to-end data connectivity solution improves business continuity by improving network resilience and reliability.