by Gary Mintchell | Oct 17, 2016 | Automation, Motion Control, News, Technology
The Festo International Press Conference has taken me on manufacturing and technology tours to Germany and Hungary in the past. This year’s event was a short drive down Interstate 75 to Cincinnati, Ohio. Here a large international press contingent toured its new $70 M state-of-the-art distribution and manufacturing center.
The facility features a highly automated order picking system unique to the manufacturing industry in North America and only comparable to the highly sophisticated warehouse systems of the strongest retail brands. With these new premises Festo is now able to triple its capacities: This allows for more flexibility, improved services and offers plenty of space for future growth.
Excellent growth prospects
The center is designed to allow for the speed and flexibility needed to accommodate Festo’s future growth in the NAFTA market (US, Canada and Mexico). The RSC will also support the expected growth in Mexico, which is becoming a recognized hub for the automotive industry. The new center has Foreign Trade Zone status, which makes it faster and more efficient to support customers in the US, Canada and Mexico from a central US location.
With a storage capacity of 65,000 bins, the highly automated warehouse system – implemented by Witron, the leading designer and supplier of fully automated warehouse and logistics systems – features seven high-performance picking stations and the capability to pick and pack 1,000 items per hour. “As regional and US sales continue to grow, this Regional Service Center will provide a strong product supply backbone for the North American market with best in class supply chain performance“, said Yannick Schilly, Head of Product Supply NAFTA
and RSC Mason.
Festo Value Production (Lean)
The facility features an implementation of the Festo Value Production system (FVP). This system is based on closely involving employees in defining standards and continuously improving processes and technical solutions. Great emphasis is placed on consistent communication as well as the visualization of objectives and results. It is thus possible to produce globally over 30,000 products with countless variants and deliver tailor-made solutions to customers all over the world within a matter of days.
The Regional Service Center features both an assembly area and the warehousing/picking area. When assembly is completed, the finished product is transported to the Regional Service Center (RSC) for shipment. All components in a system are grouped by barcode, packaged for shipping, and then shipped out to schedule.
“Our customers in North America expect top quality ‘made by Festo’, with guaranteed supplies and next-day delivery at prices in keeping with local market conditions. At the same time, energy efficiency, environmental protection and occupational safety are becoming increasingly important. The Regional Service Center in Mason/Ohio will secure our regional supplies to the North American market for the years ahead,” concludes Dr. Dirk Erik Loebermann, Chief Operation Officer and Member of the Festo Management Board.
Training and Apprenticeship Program
Festo has established a separate group, Festo Didactic, which provides training and apprenticeship programs both for Festo products and systems as well as for automation in general. In Mason, Didactic has partnered with Sinclair Community College and five companies in the Cincinnati tri-state area (Art Metal Group, Clippard Instruments, Festo Inc., MQ Automation, Nestlé) to create a two-year Mechatronics Apprenticeship Program to help employers develop the skills that are missing in the workforce today by combining theoretical education, hands-on training, and on the job training. The apprenticeship is designed to help individuals learn advanced manufacturing skills as well as earn an associate’s degree in mechatronics.
The first cohort of the program includes 11 apprentices who are training for careers as maintenance technicians, automation specialists, service technicians, and manufacturing technicians. The program uses the German apprenticeship model of dual education, where apprentices learn in a classroom and maintain a steady job.
Every week each apprentice spends one day at Sinclair Community College for classes, one day using state-of-the-art equipment at the new Festo Learning Center in Mason, and three days working at their respective employers. The apprentices are able to take what they learn in class, practice it at the Festo Learning Center, and then use that new knowledge and skill in a real-life work environment. “In terms of educational modality, the apprenticeship model couldn’t be a better fit for manufacturing,” says Vice President for Regional Centers at Sinclair Community College Scott Markland.
The Festo Learning Center is a unique part of the program. The Center is designed to meet international standards for production facilities and labs. It provides the apprentices a training facility where they can work with instructors on high-end Festo workstations that simulate a work environment and corresponds to their classroom curriculum.
Industry 4.0
For manufacturing companies in high-wage countries, Industry 4.0 provides an opportunity for remaining competitive on a global scale. “We are talking here about the transformation of industrial manufacture into a fully networked, flexible production system. To remain competitive, we must take the initiative with our characteristic spirit of inventiveness and give shape to this new development”, says Prof. Peter Post, Head of Corporate Research and Technology of Festo AG & Co. KG.
This transformation in the world of production is founded on digitalization, a crucial element in the merging of the virtual and real worlds. Prof. Post sees great potential here: “Digital refinement will give rise to increasingly intelligent products. In future, the individual elements of an overall system will be able to communicate with each other and autonomously control and regulate themselves. They are the core of industrial digitalization and support the production process through enhanced functionality – from classic aspects such as productivity and quality on to increasing individualization.”
To optimally leverage these new capabilities of intelligent products, cooperation needs to be established with many systems and business processes. “Together with our partners in Industry 4.0, we’re currently defining the new language of Industry 4.0. The German ‘Plattform Industrie 4.0’ with its widespread members from office and shop floor, as well as from standardizations and associations, works on joint reference models and international standards. This will allow for engineering the digital work stream in a kind of plug&play manner! The intelligent devices will describe themselves and will autonomously find the right collaboration partners”, details Dr. Michael Hoffmeister, representing the portfolio management software of Festo AG & Co. KG. “In the future, digitizing these virtual added values of a component will be as important as manufacturing the physical part”, he says.
Being one of the main drivers of standardization within Industry 4.0, Dr. Hoffmeister points out, how important worldwide collaboration is: “We’re working technically closely together with our colleagues from the Industrial Internet Consortium. Our business scopes are complementing each other and our architectures are mapping together”.
Festo Customers in the Region
We toured two customer plants in the area. HAHN Automation and Storopack.
HAHN Automation is one of the leading manufacturers of special machinery for automated production. Its main customers are the automotive industry and its suppliers. “We have a firm focus on customer proximity, since that is the only way we can ensure our quality standards and guarantee intensive project support,” says John Baines.
This strategy has borne fruit, as shown by the successful cooperation with customers located within three hours’ drive of Cincinnati. The nationwide list of customers reads like a who’s who of the industry: from BMW to BorgWarner, Brose, Continental or Mitsubishi, HAHN Automation’s customers include most of the industry’s global players. Another practical point is the closeness of its own facilities to Cincinnati Airport, which is just ten minutes away. This also explains why the company is developing and supplying its site in Mexico from its US factory.
Modular cell concept
HAHN Automation’s main concept is the MasterCell. A MasterCell can either be used as an automatic single workstation with manual component placement or combined into technologically sophisticated automation systems. The modular system design is based on the principle of fast and cost-effective expansion in line with demand as production quantities increase. In the MasterCell modern robots as well as leading-edge assembly and testing technology are used, making it suitable for challenging assembly and testing processes.
The benefits for customers include the standardized cell structure, ease of handling and operation, ergonomic design, high quality, high availability, short delivery times, great economic efficiency, flexible degrees of automation and high levels of customizability.
Festo automation components play an important role in the MasterCell concept: from the modular automation platform CPX/MPA to pneumatic drives from the standard product range and pneumatic grippers, HAHN Automation uses key products from the automation specialist. These are used in almost all assembly cells.
Packaging Material
Packaging material is a typical throwaway product. Packages arrive, are opened, the goods are removed, and the filler material is thrown away. “Hardly anyone – apart from Storopack – thinks about how important it is to select the right protective packaging products in the right quantity and quality for a particular application,” explains Daniel Wachter, President of Storopack for North America in Cincinnati, Ohio. Incorrect or inadequate filler material can damage goods in transit, while excessive or incorrectly inserted protective packaging material can significantly reduce productivity at packing stations in distribution centers.
Storopack produces – among other things – its AIRplus film rolls to supply to distributors and customers throughout the world. During the primary process, plastic granulate is formed into basic plastic film at blown film lines. This is then wound onto rolls by winding machines. These machines are equipped with standard cylinders DSBC which allow the rollers of the winding machines to be correctly aligned, depending on the load.
On configuration lines in the secondary process, the film is configured to the required dimensions and perforations and packed as finished AIRplus rolls. Stamping tools are used to seal and perforate the infinite plastic film to form air cushions of specific widths and lengths. These lines are also equipped with pneumatic cylinders DSBC, as well as rotary cylinders DSNU-PPS, compact cylinders ADN and short-stroke cylinders ADVC, controlled in each case by individual valves CPE 14.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 29, 2016 | Education, Productivity
“I am still learning” wrote Michelangelo at age 87. That’s one of my goals in life.
Seth Godin ran across this idea from the other direction. He wrote this week in Fully Baked:
In medical school, an ongoing lesson is that there will be ongoing lessons. You’re never done. Surgeons and internists are expected to keep studying for their entire career—in fact, it’s required to keep a license valid.
Knowledge workers, though, the people who manage, who go to meetings, who market, who do accounting, who seek to change things around them—knowledge workers often act as if they’re fully baked, that more training and learning is not just unnecessary but a distraction.
The average knowledge worker reads fewer than one business book a year.
On the other hand, the above-average knowledge worker probably reads ten.
Show me your bookshelf, or the courses you take, or the questions you ask, and I’ll have a hint as to how much you care about leveling up.
Where Do You Get Information?
I wrote yesterday’s post about getting information spurred by the thoughts of Jessica Lessin, founder of The Information. This is a Silicon Valley technology news site that is funded by subscriptions. No advertising. No worrying about pressure from advertisers to write something nice about them.
She recently wrote about the recent trend toward company CEOs or CTOs writing a piece, say on Medium, and then sending links and a quote to a few “trusted” sources in the media. She was seeing these stories picked up and passed along verbatim. No analysis or value add.
That is just what the PR people were hoping. How do they get their message out unfiltered. I’ve been advising marketing people along this path for years.
I knew a guy in my business similar to me who would just copy the press release and call it an article.
I have no problem learning about new products and solutions and technologies in the market from the source. Note: You do have to wade through an awful lot of hype and superlative words to get to the news. I don’t advise that, but marketing people seem to have no confidence in what they are peddling, so they resort to verbal overkill.
But when you go to a magazine or other source (like mine), you surely expect some perspective and analysis.
Where do you go to get this information? What do you trust?
Speaking of information
This piece in the MIT Sloan Management Review, Why Learning is Central to Sustained Innovation, seems to fit in with these thoughts. How do you create a learning environment for your people development culture?
Many managers think they can create better products just by improving the development process or adding new tools. But it’s skilled people, not processes, that create great products.
The authors, Michael Balle’, James Morgan, and Durward K. Sobek II, note, “We frequently visit companies where managers say they want to improve their product development capability. they want to learn how learn principles and practices can improve their ability to innovate while reducing costs and improving quality. When we inquire about their approach to human resource development, we often hear, as one vice president of product development recently told us, that ‘of course, people are our most important asset. Se we recruit and hire the top people from the best universities and get out of their way.’
However, the only things many companies actually do under the heading of people development is to have an annual training-hours target and a travel budget for sending employees to conferences. If managers really thought that people were their greatest asset and that it’s the energy and creativity of employees that drives innovation, why do companies do so little? Why doesn’t growing and developing people excite them just as much as installing new additive manufacturing equipment or the latest cloud-based collaboration tool?”
It takes leadership concerned with a learning culture, beginning with the leaders. Are they always learning? Reminds me of James Truchard, founder of National Instruments. He had such tremendous curiosity. He passed that along to the organization in many ways. Everyone wanted to be like that.
Millennials and learning
In his On The Edge Blog, Keith Campbell, wrote:
Is a culture of entitlement contributing to the workforce skills gap?
There has been a lot of discussion of the entitlement mentality of today’s young people as they leave college and expect that they are owed a well-paying job starting somewhere near the top. On today’s news, there was a discussion about some interns who decided that they were entitled to a work environment that operated the way they wanted it to, and they proceeded to challenge the employer’s policies (yes, the same employer that was kind enough to give them their first work experience). They were summarily fired. I was recently asked by a parent to provide some guidance to a son who had received a mechanical engineering degree, but had no job. I suggested that he consider companies such as packaging machinery manufacturers or packagers – not only because they are hiring mechanical engineers, but because they offer exciting careers. But after a few minutes of speaking with him, I learned that he knew more about how the engineering workplace operated than I did (after 30 years), and he felt entitled to wait till some job came around that suited his vision of engineering.
Less often discussed is the entitlement mentality of employers. I see employers also acting as though they are entitled to the workers that they want, when they want them and with the skills that they need. There was a day when there were multiple qualified applicants for each open manufacturing job. Employers had to use various screening mechanisms to pick from among the qualified. But those days seem to be behind us. Automation has raised the bar for entry level employment while high schools have arguably lowered the bar for graduation and reduced the diversity of programs, driven in large part by increasing state and national control. The gap between the unemployed and unfilled manufacturing jobs is growing wider.
I’m currently sitting in a conference session. A speaker mentioned about Millennials and their work ethic. Sounded like Campbell above. I think that is a misplaced thought and terrible generalization. Remember when we talked about Gen X and the “slacker” mentality? I’m in a room about evenly divided with Boomers and GenXers. The GenX guys and gals are doing some really good engineering. But I remember when many of them asked how many months it would take before they would be CEO. Sounds more like the exuberance of youth than a generation thing.
The question remains. How do you keep learning? Where do you get information? How are you helping others learn?
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 19, 2016 | News
We have been anticipating a transition at Rockwell Automation, and today the company announced it has happened. Its board of directors has elected Blake D. Moret, a 30-year veteran of the Company, as president and chief executive officer, effective July 1, 2016. At that time Keith D. Nosbusch, 65, who has been president and chief executive officer since 2004, will transition from those roles while continuing as chairman of the board. Moret, 53, is currently senior vice president of the Company’s Control Products & Solutions segment.
A similar transition occurred when Nosbusch became CEO—Don Davis remained as Chairman for a period of time to assist the transition.
Rockwell had a strong group of internal contenders for the position. Any would have been a good choice in my opinion.
Donald R. Parfet, Lead Director, said: “Blake has proven himself to be an exceptional leader, with demonstrated readiness to lead the company. We welcome him to his new role at the conclusion of a deliberate and planned succession process. We are delighted he will build on the Company’s many accomplishments under Keith’s direction and propel our vision of The Connected Enterprise to the next level.”
“The past 12 years have been transformational for Rockwell Automation,” Parfet continued. “We’ve become a global technology leader and the world’s largest company dedicated to industrial automation and information. Equally important, we are well positioned to accelerate our evolution with industry-leading innovation that improves our customers’ global competitiveness.”
“We thank Keith for his outstanding leadership during this period, including his work as a vocal champion of smart, productive, and secure manufacturing. We are pleased that he has agreed to stay on as chairman so that the Company can continue to benefit from his experience and support Blake’s transition to CEO.”
Nosbusch said: “It has been an honor and privilege to lead Rockwell Automation over the past 12 years. While as a team we enjoyed tremendous success, I have no doubt that we are well positioned for an even greater future. Blake is the ideal executive to move Rockwell Automation forward in its next chapter. He brings a strong customer focus, as well as a deep understanding of the Company’s values, culture, people, and technology, and how each of these power the Company’s success.”
Moret said: “I am honored to have the opportunity to lead Rockwell Automation and its talented employees into an exciting future. We have a deep management team, unmatched technology solutions, domain expertise across a broad range of industries, and enduring customer relationships around the world. We are committed to continue to deliver customer and shareowner value in the years ahead.”
Moret has 30 years of experience in sales and business management roles in product, services, and solutions businesses across Rockwell Automation. He began his career in 1985 as a sales trainee, and subsequently served in senior positions across the organization, including international assignments in Europe and Canada. In 2011, he was named senior vice president of Control Products & Solutions, one of the Company’s two business segments, with FY15 sales of $3.6 billion.
Moret is a graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. He has served as Chair of the Board of the Manufacturing Institute of the National Association of Manufacturers. Additionally, he is a member of the Board of Directors for the Milwaukee-based Urban Ecology Center, the Board of Directors of the United Way of Greater Milwaukee, and the Advisory Board of the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech.
by Gary Mintchell | Mar 7, 2016 | Operations Management, Software
Tim Sowell always packs many operations management ideas into a brief blog post. Sowell is a VP and Fellow at Schneider Electric Software (Wonderware). I’ve looked at his posts before. He is always thinking out in front of most people.
His Feb. 14 post, Composite Frameworks What Are They, the Shift to Model Driven vs. Custom: How Do They Play?, takes a look at moving the user experience of operations management software into newer territory.
He probably says much more, but this is the take I’m going to analyze. He’s pointing out the difficulties of using traditional approaches to programming and presenting User Interfaces in a way that keeps pace with today’s expectations.
“Traditionally companies have built User Interfaces to an API, with the calls needed to execution actions and transactions; these have worked well especially within a plant. But a key to operational systems being effective and agile is their ability to adapt on a regular basis. This requires a sustainable and evolving system. This is especially important in form/ transaction activities where information is provided and where actions/ data input, and procedures need to be carried out.”
He does not stop there but proceeds to enumerate some challenges:
- Operational Process cross-over functional domains and applications
- Lack of governance
- AgilityResponsive manufacturing business processes
- Increase the performance of their people assets
- Too much Custom Code, making it unmanageable and evolutionary
He wonders why we can’t use techniques gleaned from Business Process Modeling. That’s a good question! He notes that some people will say that BPM is not real-time like manufacturing/industrial applications are. But he rebuts that “this also aligns with what the industrial world is very comfortable world with—that of ‘stable in control loops’.”
Operations management solutions
Here are some proposed solutions:
- Providing a graphical configuration environment for the capture and defining of operational process including the validation of data input, and guiding actions, working inline with the user Interface/ forms etc.
- Providing a framework for building of reusable forms, and reusable procedures that can be managed as templates and standards to enforce consistent operational practices.
- Empowering the operational domain people to develop, evolve and manage their procedures.
“Most of all empowering the different roles in the plant, that operational close loop moving to an “activity” centric system where information, and action is driven from a consistent operational model and practices.”
This is a consistent Sowell message. Let’s see what we can template-ize or project as a model rather than custom code everything.
More and more owner/operators and users I talk to are getting tired of the expense and lead-time for custom coded projects. They need the speed and flexibility of using models and standards for application implementation. I think this is where Sowell was headed (if not, he’ll correct me, I’m sure). This will serve to move industry forward as a more profitable contributor to enterprise health.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 3, 2016 | News
ABB has had a rugged financial period, but its latest financial results indicate a righting of the ship. I’m not a financial analyst; I didn’t sleep at a Holiday Inn Express; but, I’m interested in corporate strategies and performance especially among industrial technology suppliers.
What follows is mostly from the company press release. However read CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer’s remarks. There are two significant comments. One–recovery in the Power Systems business. ABB moved some talented individuals from the process automation business over to Power Systems. It wasn’t an overnight success, but the team has made an impact. Two–“productivity improvements”, which is usually a euphemism for fewer people doing more work.
Anyway, I noticed a little bounce in ABB’s stock price in the last week. Looks promising.
Full-year 2015 Summary:
- Next Level strategy delivering positive results
- Orders and revenues stable, order backlog up 5%
- Operational EBITA margin up 60 bps to 11.8%
- Operational earnings per share +5% (constant currency)
- Cash return on invested capital up 70 bps to 13.4%; free cash flow +16%
- Power Systems ‘step change delivers strong financial turnaround in 2015
- 7th consecutive dividend increase to CHF 0.74 per share proposed
- 4 new Board members proposed for election at the next annual general meeting
Q4 Summary:
- Orders (-2%) reflect challenging market conditions; base orders -6%
- Operational EBITA margin up 60 bps to 11.7%
- Power Systems reached target margin corridor; strategic portfolio review of Power Grids on track
- Accelerated productivity and cost out measures in white collar, supply chain and operational excellence
- Net income of $204mn including a total $496mn restructuring and related expenses
- Cash flow from operating activities +18%
Full-year and Q4 financials impacted by currency translation due to strong appreciation of US dollar
“We took decisive actions to improve our customer focus and realized profitable growth in target segments to mitigate the impact of significant market headwinds. At the same time, we simplified the organization, drove productivity improvement and accelerated our cost reductions,” said CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer. “As a result, we increased margin and free cash flow. The successful turnaround in Power Systems demonstrates our execution capabilities and our focus on sustainable value creation. With our strong financial position and a leaner, more market oriented organization we are well placed to manage through the global uncertainties which we will continue to face in 2016.”
Short-term outlook
Macroeconomic and geopolitical developments are signaling a mixed picture with continued uncertainty. Some macroeconomic signs in the US remain positive and growth in China is expected to continue, although at a slower pace than in 2015. The market remains impacted by modest growth in Europe and geopolitical tensions in various parts of the world. Oil prices and foreign exchange translation effects are expected to continue to influence the company’s results.
Full-year 2015 Group Results
“We are shifting our center of gravity, fully in line with our Next Level strategy by driving organic growth in targeted segments, strengthening competitiveness and lowering risk,” said CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer. “We drove technology leadership with the launch of YuMi, the first truly collaborative robot. We strengthened our technology leadership position in the area of the Internet of Things, Services and People, for instance with our innovative Octopus offering for optimized vessel operations. Furthermore, our focus on high growth markets such as food and beverage and Africa is paying off.”
Orders were steady for the year (down 12 percent in US dollars). Large orders (above $15 million) grew 10 percent (down 5 percent in US dollars) and offset a base order decline of 3 percent (14 percent in US dollars). The order backlog at the end of December 2015 amounted to $24.1 billion, an increase of 5 percent (down 3 percent in US dollars) compared with the end of 2014. The book-to-bill ratio remained steady at 1.03x.
Revenues were steady (down 11percent in US dollars) compared with 2014 as revenue growth in Power Systems and Power Products offset the decline in Discrete Automation and Motion and Process Automation. Service revenues grew 6 percent (down 8 in US dollars) and grew 1 percentage point as a percent of total group revenues (adjusted for divestitures; 0.5 percent prior to adjustment).
ABB continued to execute its Next Level strategy in 2015 which resulted in a 60 basis points improvement of the operational EBITA margin to 11.8 percent and free cash flow generation improving 16 percent in constant currency (6 percent in US dollars) to $3 billion. The main drivers for the group’s enhanced profitability were the successful turnaround of Power Systems and continued cost savings and productivity measures.
“The strong execution of our strategy is showing results,” said Ulrich Spiesshofer. “In 2015 we continued to focus on growth opportunities in a disciplined way while mitigating the impact of market headwinds through capacity adjustments, productivity measures and cost reductions. Transforming ABB, we have made good progress towards enhancing our performance culture by implementing our new performance management and compensation model for more than 70,000 people in 2015. The divisional realignment has been completed and the strategic portfolio review of the Power Grids division is to be completed in 2016 as previously announced.”
Net income for the year amounted to $1.9 billion and was impacted by $626 million of restructuring and related expenses for capacity adjustments and white collar productivity measures. Successful measures to improve net working capital contributed to higher cash flow from operating activities (constant currency) and free cash flow conversion and supported an increased cash return on invested capital2 (CROI) of 13.4 percent. Basic earnings per share in the period was $0.87 and operational earnings per share2 on a constant currency basis was $1.35, an increase of 5 percent.
