How data brings more insghts and a positive impact in closed loop manufacturing [VIDEO]

In a recent interview with Matthias Roese, Global chief technologist for HPE Manufacturing, Automotive & IoT, Germany, we learned how Data, edge computing, composable infrastructure are the basis for a circular econmomy and guarentee for a sustainable future.

A big hope for the future, where technology and data will generate the needed postive impact on our environment and society, thanks to closed loop manufacturing, where we finally will see the total impact of an activity on the whole chain.

Yves Mulkers
We are at HPE discover More in Munich with Mathias talking about closed loop manufactoring.

Matthias Which steps forward did you take the last year’s

Matthias Roese
well compared to Last year, we already had the concept of closed loop manufacturing, which basically means connecting all the relevant processes in manufacturing cycles of manufacturing companies, including research development, but also into, let’s say the after sales market.
That gives us also from a feedback loop a lot of information in terms of what is happening out there.
How is the product designed and how it ends up in the real usage on the customer side.
That gave us already a lot of impact. getting that information back.

What we’re currently doing is basically moving into a step ahead, we see already a lot of very, very automated processes in our customers environments, but they’re more or less automated on a certain perception, I would call it that way and everyone next to each other.

What is not really happening is feedback looping between all the different processes that gives us especially in the process industry quite often the challenge that something is happening within that process, but no one really understands why it has happened.
Also very sophisticated production processes like in pharmaceuticals, which are FDA regulated.

You would expect that they’re pretty stringent.
They are, by the way, but on the other hand, still some challenges happen.

What we are seeing, that if we are starting to connect the data points with each other, using artificial intelligence technology, basically, if you have the data regardless if you have it in a data lake, or if you have it in a certain PLC, or in our edge devices, or wherever it might be, gives us a lot of insights to understand how to improve the process.

It’s not just the process industry, by the way, we also see strong movements in the the automotive industry.
Basically, taking everything we learned in the closed loop, let’s say projects and taking that into what we call an automation to autonomy.
We’re trying to make that side of production lines, more autonomous and try to break down the silos between every single process that we might be missing at our customers right now.

Yves Mulkers
So it’s the end, in fact, the complete processing where as you say, before it were the individual parts that were optimised.
I see that in general where, as a society, we have a big problem on calculating the total impact of whatever we’re doing, look at the carbon emission.
There is a future I think, where we say, we’re starting small already only in in a very controlled manufacturing process.

Where do you see that is leading to?
A more a sustainable way for the future?

Matthias Roese
That’s a that’s a pretty good point.

We had, I think you’ve been part of that as well, where we had a discussion in Hanover, around bringing closed loop manufacturing into a sustainability idea into into our circular economy approach.
And that has also progressed a little bit.

We just recently had a pretty interesting session with MIT with Neil Gershenfeld, who’s a big provider.
He’s forcing the idea of having this fablabs of being self sustainable within cities.

And if you think that through, that also goes a lot into, fluid production, production sites, which are way more flexible.

We’re doing some research with arena 2036 out of Stuttgart, which is mainly driven by the university there, but as well, large, large customers of ours, like Daimler, and Bosch, big automotives.
The idea is basically to become more sustainable.

Frankly, reducing waste from autonomy perspective, is already a big step, but I think there are a lot more steps to go, coming back to the Neil Gershenfeld example.

He is a strong driver of, very modular compute modules, which we are doing, to a certain extent, also with our composable infrastructure, which gives us basically the opportunity to also, use our compute environments, in a way, the customer really needs that and tailor them more or less Software Defined to the specific needs of the customers.
And that could at the end lead to a longer use.

So more sustainable, because we can basically, tailor the systems according to the requirements.

In addition to that, we obviously have a big circular economy approach, which means that we are also retrofitting some of our devices, which we’re taking back from customers, making sure we’re recycling them the way we should.
Which puts us high on the on the Greenpeace Sustainability Index.
We’re really trying to be not just from a local perspective, but also from a company perspective, become more and more green.

Serving also the communities, because at the end, I think the resources are limited, and we really need to start thinking about that and become more green all of us, not just not just the IT world.

Yves Mulkers
Sustainability on the technology part where you say reusable composable infrastructure, as well help find the right solution for the customer.
You also talked about automotive, where do you see that that is leading to?

Matthias Roese
Well, I think the whole automotive model have some challenges.
Let’s just put it that way regardless if it’s the green movement, regardless if it’s the combustion engine, the challenge simply we see there.

What we see heavily coming back to arena 2036 is new materials.
It’s about using lightweight materials in the production processes, but also become more flexible in terms of production.
These are two highlights.

We’re currently driving heavily with our partners in arena 2036, where we’re using the closed loop manufacturing approach in a way to have processes which are handing into each other.

As I said earlier, we also are, looking into fluid production processes being able to have a, it will not longer be a production line, but if you think as it in a production line, to be able to use the toolings you have in multiple different ways and that gives you at the end lower use resource impact, in terms of the robot you have to buy or whatever it might be.
That also comes along from our perspective heavily with IT, because the processes will become more and more complex on one hand and on the other hand you’re more more dependent on these processes.
In the factory you can no longer mount a wheel the way you did it before, because it will be part of a much more complex production system.

Yves Mulkers
You’re talking about the manufacturing plants, the companies in itself.
I see the individual ones, but you have the complete supply chain as well.

Do you see an optimization all across the complete supply chain

Matthias Roese
I would say across, the whole data pipeline basically.

I just presented downstairs our concept around an enterprise service bus, because what we discussed so far is basically the production side of the house.
But you also need to understand, I always use an example of a chocolate bar.

If you have a waiver, which is probably one gram to light, you can add a gram more chocolate on it.
At the end, you still have your 80 grams of chocolate bar, whatever that might be, but has clearly also an impact on the supply chain side because if you do that for a couple of days, for whatever reason, you run out of chocolate normally, on the other inside you need to connect to your ERP system because it needs to be also financially sustainable.

You need to have the trade off between, should I throw away that waiver because it’s too light or can I afford? Let’s say Putting a gram more chocolate on it.
This is basically what we are currently looking into.

To come back to your question.
We think we need to have an enterprise service bus.

There are also a couple of solutions down there, where you basically can get all your manufacturing production data in, your ERP data, your supply chain data, some logistics data and make sure it is financially affordable to change the production in a certain way.

I think that’s also a big step, we will see the next one or two years to bring that data more together and try to understand the different silos.
Different domains need to understand each other much better than before, in order to to have a more streamlined production process.

Yves Mulkers
The data will help you in fact, rethink how you are working these days and optimize the complete chain being more sustainable and more flexible.

Matthias Roese
The good news is, you most likely have all the data, so Most likely the data is already out there somewhere hidden in a PLC somewhere in the database you never heard about and so on and so on.

The real question is really bringing that together and trying to, to make the loop working because again, coming back to closed loop manufacturing, R&D, design, prototyping, production, after sales, they’re all kind of were together in a certain way.

But they’re not working together in a very seamless, very interactive way, in every single direction.

And that leads to a point that sometimes, changes in the field.

After sales after market problems are not taken, as fast as it could be into, for instance, the production.
Just if you mount that little piece in a slightly different way, or if we if you just take a slightly different part, it would cause less problems in the field and that’s also something where we are heavily working on it.

Exactly, you’re mostly have the data, but you quite often cannot really interpret it the right way.
Because coming back to the production, it is somewhere in one of that little bucket you have.

You probably don’t even know that the data is there.
And if you would know you cannot integrate it because it’s probably in a different format and then that makes it quite difficult.

But again, amazing, amazing opportunities right now.

That’s the good news, ton of opportunities, and we really see picking it up right now.

So we’re talking about it for about two years now.
And right now we really start see projects really starting getting off the POC phase and really becoming valuable on the customer side,

Yves Mulkers
Matthias
Thanks very much.

Matthias Roese
Thank you for having me.
Have a great show.

Thank you.