BLUFFTON, SC — As part of BEMA’s annual convention, which took place June 20-24 in Bluffton, SC, the association offered business sessions on topics and issues facing the commercial baking industry.
Continuing the discussion of Industry 4.0 and the digital factory, John Dyck, CEO of CESMII, The Smart Manufacturing Institute, discussed the value smart manufacturing can bring to facilities of all sizes.
CESMII is a private-public partnership funded by the US government to deploy ideas and fund the creation of technologies and education in manufacturing organizations. The nonprofit institute’s goal is to advance the cause of smart manufacturing in the US by driving down the cost and the time it takes to implement smart manufacturing software systems and automation systems across all industries by 50%.
“We did a survey in 2022 on all aspects related to smart manufacturing,” Dyck shared. “When we asked for the headwinds around implementing and creating value around using smart manufacturing, number one was talent. Numbers two and three were the cost and the complexity of implementation. These are all core components in how we’re investing and moving forward.”
With manufacturing productivity on a continuous decline, Dyck emphasized the need to create a more productive manufacturing environment for future generations.
“Manufacturing is the hallmark of innovation in this country,” he said. “But it’s important to recognize that, certainly in the last decade, manufacturing in Europe and Asia has been eclipsing the investment in manufacturing in the US, specifically in smart manufacturing.”
In his more than 25 years of experience with building and implementing systems, Dyck said he’s seen a 25% to 30% capacity gap across the board between plants that manually record data and plants that use digital systems for data collection. The gap is created by following a “gut feeling” about the data vs. mining real data. In other words, companies that rely on manual data collection may have additional capacity in their plants they didn’t know they had.
“What we’re talking about is the disruption of an entire manufacturing ecosystem.” — John Dyck | CEO | CESMII
“There’s enormous value to understanding your constraints, setting a new baseline and measuring whatever it is you’re measuring in a specific, structured way,” Dyck said.
“What we’re talking about is the disruption of an entire manufacturing ecosystem,” he added. “The historic, legacy, proprietary behaviors, technologies and approaches that were common and acceptable in Industry 3.0 are no longer acceptable going forward.”
Visit the CESMII website for information about the organization’s role in advancing smart manufacturing and its acceleration program and capability assessment tool for manufacturers.
