Woodworking: The Smart Factory way

Sayeed Ahmed, CEO, Biesse India

WOODWORKING INDUSTRY in India is one of the fastest growing industries in India's economy. It is predominantly in the unorganized sector with basic production setup equipped with outdated equipment. This has a direct impact on productivity, efficiency, and quality of products. The loss is in opportunity of a fast growing & demanding market within the country to imports and with the lucrative export markets. India needs to build ecosystem required for a thriving woodworking industry by having more medium and large companies which can have competitive advantage from economies of scale, standardization in home/office furniture, availability of raw material through additional panel manufacturing companies, efficient logistics, testing and certification and skill development.

Advanced production technologies and management systems are available now in India that also augurs well with Industry 4.0 requirements. Steadily woodworking and furniture industries are embracing these technologies to gain the competitive advantage.

The Smart Factory

Compact, connected, and accessible, Biesse’s Smart Action concept offers companies looking to increase efficiency a straightforward route to transform their operations into a real ‘Smart Factory’.
To enable this, machines are connected in real time to deliver optimised production, making manufacturers more efficient, and therefore more competitive. The key connect here is the ‘software’ that leads the way to enable integrated production management. With the complete digitalisation of processes, products can be produced quickly and flexibly, with scope for customisation.

Smart Factories are not only in the domain of big factories and large-scale production sites. SME’S and smaller factories can equally benefit by exploiting all the power and effectiveness of highly integrated solutions, including:

• Reduced space with reduced labour
• Integrated and optimised production management
• Easy management and learning, even for less-experienced operators
• Reduced resource consumption
• Minimal investment

Smart action technologies makes it possible for tailor made furniture or continuous production even in limited working spaces and with reduced labour force. SmartConnection is a software package for managing job orders within the company - from the generation phase to scheduling and actual production start-up - in just a few simple, intuitive steps.

For the small production site, the smart factory exploits all the power and effectiveness of highly integrated solutions to ensure processes that are standardised yet don't forgo customization.

• Reduced overall dimensions
• Solutions for every space requirement, with reduced labour
• Integrated management
• Optimisation of the production process
• Minimum investment
• Easy management and learning, even for less experienced operators
• Reduced consumption and Eco Saving

The machines are all connected in real time and guarantee fast, optimised production, making the whole company more competitive. Smart action provides solutions where it's the software that leads integrated production management.

Smart Factory for Modular Furniture

The digital revolution has led to a momentous change based on the technological innovation that involves production systems, businesses, the market, and the relations between these areas and humans. In addition to the above machining solutions, fully featured CAD/CAM software takes care of the production, right from design to final installation. It helps the manufacturer in every design stage from creating solutions to the final render plan that gives a detailed preview of the solutions which have been specially designed. The Indian modular furniture manufacturer needs software that can curb the complex task of programming and using machines, simplifying everyday work while guaranteeing the benefits offered by current technological advances. Thanks to cutting-edge application software that is intuitive, with user friendly machine interface which is easily adaptable for smart factory. There’s a host of features this software provides:

• Design Freedom
• Default Hardware Models
• Inventory Supplier Module
• Costing & Quotation
• Machine Integration
• Compatibility with 3rd Party Software
• Planning & Assembly Process

Every manufacturer’s space and production process may differ, it is SmartConnect software central to a Smart Factory being able to run effectively and efficiently. It helps manufacturers manage production from the 3D design phase through to production flow monitoring, by providing:

• Easy management of work phases – cutting, nesting, edge banding, drilling, assembly, packaging
• Dedicated environment for real-time production monitoring, providing order status control
• Management and distribution of all data required to run the process, without further manual intervention
• Visualisation of production status
• Progress of each component
• Optimisation of the production process including simulation tools

To complement the Smart Factory, machine and service information is monitored and collated to help customers optimize their assets through an IoT platform ‘SOPHIA’.

SOPHIA supports increased productivity by providing users with access to machine information, helping to optimise performance and monitor quality. It also helps to deliver improved service levels by utilising a SCADA system to collect machine data and by performing test cycles to help anticipate potential future faults and to provide notification of a machine-down status. Proactive support is extended to customers to help resolve issues faster. Overall, SOPHIA helps to reduce machine stoppages, increase machine availability and consequently output.

The way ahead

Intelligent systems are connecting the world. This allows businesses to adapt more quickly. It is about improving machine availability, performance and quality via physical automation, software and connected machines or facilities. This means a leaner process is required if one wants to compete, let alone just protect the business. Advanced technologies help customers to transform their operations, to achieve greater efficiency, and therefore derive better value from their machines.

The combination of automation and digitalisation can provide real value to customers by helping to improve Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE), the measure of how well a machine works.

Government consideration of PLI scheme for the furniture industry as a sunrise sector is a welcome initiative to make the domestic manufacturing globally competitive. This will boost the confidence of market in investing in smart technologies for meeting the demand not only from the local market but also for increasing the exports too. According to estimates, furniture export, at present, is about $400 million per year. Global furniture exports currently stand at $264 billion; a great opportunity in export markets exists for the Smarts.