Taking precision to new level

Germany. The name, apart from the epicenter of Europe turmoil, conveys perfection; a place where machines work for precision. And Germany has been continuing to keep itself right ahead in digital revolution too. But it has now come up with a new concept – Smart Factories.

The entire machinery in Germany is working towards this new revolution – right from the German government to companies, universities and research institutions, all are adopting fully automated, Internet-based “smart” factories. Through this process, the entire manufacturing process is on the web and all these units ‘communicate’ through the web. The entire shop floor is fully automated and the moment there is an incomplete product, the assembly line will ‘tell’ the machine itself what needs to be done and immediately the product will be automatically put to completion. This removes the need for dependency on humans completely.

A fully automated shop floor is yet on the pilot stage but the objective is that the wireless network will be the most critical component wherein machines and products will ‘talk’ – suppose an order was place for shampoo making, the moment the order comes in online, radio identification tags attached to empty soap bottles on an assembly line simultaneously communicated to production machines what kind of soap, fragrance, bottle cap color, and labeling it required. Each bottle had the potential to be entirely different from the one next to it on the conveyor belt. Thus customized products can also be made by just putting the order in a specific format online. The only human input here – placing the order online. Siemens factory there is about 75% on autopilot, with 1,150 employees mostly operating computers and monitoring the production process.

Wow. Seems like a different world there, almost like something out of a sci-fi movie, especially because we are so focused on labor oriented projects.