The six steps to becoming a truly smart production facility





This article is based on an interview undertaken by FusionMedium's  technology 
online media, TechOrange, and published with permission: 

With the arrival of Industry 4.0, factories need to be smart to keep up with 
the times. Business owners require a significant amount of technical data to 
effectively estimate changes in production capacity as well as monitor the 
status of mechanized and automated operations.

ASUS has started a long and rigorous transformation process in the face of 
increasingly fierce competition on a global scale. From the outset, ASUS 
upgraded its own smart manufacturing and recast the brand. It then followed 
with the launch of the intelligent cloud services platform Taiwan Web Service 
Corporation (TWS), transitioning the firm into a fully cloud-native public 
cloud services provider. Later, ASUS made the security around the cloud 
information more robust and continued to focus on AI, 5G, and blockchain to 
benefit from the synergies of technology and business.

ASUS invested in several new technologies and processes with an eye to 
developing advanced manufacturing capabilities, and participated in the AI on 
Chip Industrial Cooperation Strategic Alliance promoted by the Smart 
Electronics Industry Product Promotion Office (SIPO) of the Industrial 
Development Bureau, in a move to further its commitment to the development of 
AI on Chip core areas and increasing the visibility and competitiveness of 
Taiwan's related industries in the international arena.

6 processes + 2 phases designed to make the factory really smart

Winson Lu, director of AI Solution BU of AIoT BG at ASUS, noted that in the 
first instance, the factory must become fully computerized and connected so as 
to be in a position to collect all the information in connection with the 
operation of all equipment.

The six important processes took place in two development phases. In the first 
phase - Smart Factory 1.0, ASUS established a complete infrastructure, 
collecting equipment information and building a new database, providing a 
foundation for the data analysis in the next phase - Smart Factory 2.0.

ASUS incorporated the equipment control and the site management layers into the 
central monitoring and management platform, unifying factory big data and 
creating visualization models. Real-time data and information analysis, such as 
production, quality, and labor indicators, as well as production expenditure 
costs, can be monitored by the factory information center, allowing senior 
managers to make operational and managerial decisions in real-time.

In addition to the central monitoring and management platform, AR glasses, 
automated unmanned handling systems, and AI defect detection systems also 
served as important tools to significantly enhance production efficiency.

New technologies alongside the central system drive up efficiency across the 
whole of the factory

Winson Lu said that AR glasses can be quite useful in three scenarios: remote 
collaboration, information data display, and material identification/shipment 
confirmation. Once a worker puts on the AR glasses, not only is a plethora of 
information about the factory displayed in front of the worker's line of vision 
but he or she can collaborate remotely by transmitting information about the 
situation on-site to remote personnel immediately.

As the pandemic ravaged the world, AR glasses could be described as the savior 
of many large factories. During the extensive lockdown period, equipment 
experts could not fly to Taiwan nor could they enter the factory to maintain 
equipment.

The AR glasses presented a solution. Even if the equipment expert is on the 
other side of the globe, as long as the factory personnel donned the AR glasses 
and turned on the camera function, they can let the remote expert see for 
himself the status of any piece of equipment through the AR view feature and 
then assist the field personnel to repair and maintain the equipment, so that 
the factory could quickly return to normal operation.

In the solution developed by ASUS, as soon as the manufacturing execution 
system assigns the work order, the smart storage system will start to prepare 
the materials and notify the automated unmanned handling system to collect 
them, achieving a fully automated process. This reduces manpower demand and 
human error on site, improves the efficiency of material handling, and shortens 
the time needed to switch processing jobs.

ASUS also developed an AI defect detection system. During the production 
process, defective components can be detected to effectively reduce time lost 
and scrap rates.

In the era of Industry 4.0, the smart factory equipped with a central 
monitoring platform and various new technological devices has become a key part 
of manufacturing. Yet even more advances are in the offing with digital twins, 
machine learning, and a wide range of AI solutions, all of which will optimize 
the existing solution and make the factory ever smarter.

Media Contact
Shine Chiu
shine@fusionmedium.com
+886-919-031-282

SOURCE:Fusionmedium