Technology Archives - Page 3 of 5

Company Culture: The Force Behind Digital Transformation

By Mariana Costa, Marketing Specialist at PackIOT How does digital transformation really happen? “Digital Transformation” became a very big expression used across several industries and contexts to name the process through which the company adopts and implements digital solutions which offer benefits to its activity. In this blog post we want to dig deeper and explore the necessary steps to bring digital transformation forward in the manufacturing world. When researching to bring this blog post to life, it was very easy to notice the prevailing narrative around digital transformation as how digital transformation enables a cultural shift in the company. Interesting how often we talk about culture as consequence of a certain event but not as the force behind it. This approach might be missing some important aspects... Before we move further into the subject, we want to bring to light why we decided to talk about this. Some weeks ago, in a very normal day at PackIOT, during a meeting with a client something very important was said: “Culture first. Tool second.”. So important that we had to write about it. Guess what, no matter how amazing a digital tool is and the benefits that come…

Niched x Generic Solution: Which One Fits Best Your Factory’s Digital Transformation Journey?

By Fernando Pacheco, COO at PackIOT Find the right solution that really fits your digital transformation maturity/moment is not an easy task. But being honest, it neither does have to be a nightmare. First of all, we’ve been saying this for so long: industry 4.0. innovation and digital transformation are not only about technology but also highly committed and related to the culture of a company. After overcoming this stage of the cultural challenge, you will be able to pick the right suppliers to help you solve your factory's pain points. But should you choose a niched solution or a generically one? (no matter the service you are looking for). This is a simple question to answer. Always choose the company/technology that has experience in your sector. Most of the time, niched solutions are adapted to address your needs because they were created to solve those specific problems exactly, already familiar to you and your factory. #1 How to find out if a company is able to help your packaging factory? Check out their cases: does the company have experience in your sector? Do you know their clients? How are they positioning themselves in the market? Ask…

Deploying Industrial Analytics from Scratch (by Kudzai Manditereza)

Industrial Analytics has the potential to transform how organizations identify and eliminate operational problems that often arise in manufacturing plant-floors. Problems such as lack of visibility, unplanned downtime, low quality, and management of changeovers. Moreover, industrial analytics can help detect opportunities and/or issues that may have gone unnoticed. Examples include the detection of anomalous conditions in equipment and process data. If operating your factory with the highest possible efficiency is what you yearn for, then there couldn't have been a better time than now for you to start on the path of understanding how Industrial Analytics work, and how they can help you transform the way you run operations. In a nutshell, Industrial Analytics is a solution that helps you identify wastage in your factory. Wastage in the form of production defects, over-production, unplanned downtime, non-utilization of equipment, extra processing, inventory, transportation, and so forth. And once you've identified wastage, an analytics solution gives you the power to take action in order to reduce or eliminate that wastage. This article is meant to give you a guide on how you can go about deploying an analytics solution for your manufacturing plant. Let's first take a look at how…

My Packaging Plant Already Collects Data. And Now What? Which Questions Should Be Answered?

By Fernando Pacheco, COO at PackIOT The situation described in the title is more common than one can imagine. And if you have come this far, it is likely that you have been facing this challenge in your factory. This problem can occur in several ways (they are not mutually excluding): Your machines are already factory-sensed and deliver general data, but you don't know what to do with it. Your data is stored in the PLC, but nobody could access it in an easy way and/or does not gets insights and information from there (you don't have a front-end tool, in the end). Your plant spends a giant amount of time manually collecting data, but it does not make any decisions. you already have a powerful MES in place, which helps you on a piece of the data journey, but you can't cross these numbers with real production information (actionable data). And after that, of course, these challenges can lead to other difficult situations, usually described by plant managers as below: "I wanted to automate everything. I have the data in different places, but every time we need to put it together, a person needs to sit down,…

The 5 Steps To Bring Industry 4.0 Into Your Factory

By Mariana Costa, Marketing Specialist at PackIOT Introducing Industry 4.0 is always a disruptive and challenging process for businesses and their employees. Manufacturers are progressively getting familiar with the idea of the smart factory and it is becoming hard to ignore its advancements towards becoming the new reality of the industry. One thing is clear: companies should prepare ahead and rethink their approach as the industry continuously advances towards the implementation of 4.0 technologies. As we already saw in previous blog posts, the technology of Industry 4.0 consists of interconnected systems. Consequently, data is shared across these systems allowing for the creation of meaningful insights. Manufacturers are then in the right position to analyze and make the best decisions for their factories towards a more lean environment (reducing expenses and optimizing operations). By now, you are probably wondering what are the exact steps you need to take to finally start your journey with Industry 4.0. We thought about this and compiled a list of the five main steps towards implementing 4.0 technologies to transition to the Smart Factory! 1_Identify Pain Points and Pick a Vendor The first step to start this journey is to document the pain…

5 Things You Need to Know About the Industry 4.0 Revolution to Kick-Start Your Journey

By Mariana Costa, Marketing Specialist at PackIOT We are now living in an era where computers and automation have come together in a completely new way. More and more the input from human operators is not a key necessity anymore since systems have evolved to be almost entirely independent through machine learning, algorithms and AI. This change brought by technology is often called the Fourth Industrial Revolution or the Industry 4.0 revolution and it has impacted the way businesses are done ever since. The Industry 4.0 revolution is closing the gap between Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT). It is a multifaceted revolution made by some key ingredients such as IoT, test automation and digital twins, all of which are essential to combine the physical and virtual worlds. The merging of traditional manufacturing and technological innovation has resulted in fast changes for the industry which is forcing manufacturers to either adapt quickly or fall behind of what has been called the Smart Factory. While there are some challenges in this transition, we can’t ignore the great benefits that come with it - increased test reliability and efficiency, cost reduction and improved product quality. The first big…

Women In Manufacturing: Changing The Industry’s Mindset

The jobs in manufacturing are mainly held by men: according to a study by Pew Research Center, in the US women make 40% of the labour force and only 29% work in an industrial field. There are thousands of job places that cannot be filled and it's difficult for manufacturers to hire people for those spots. Women could play an important role in that. This gap needs to be filled, and could actually be filled by females. So how can we convince women to opt for a job position in manufacturing? There is a big number of qualified women in the workforce, so we have to understand careers in the industrial sector, are not that appealing for them. According to a study by Deloitte, women who work in manufacturing feel underrepresented. It is certain that if manufacturers want to have more women working for them, they will certainly need to change their strategy related to recruiting, retaining, and advancing women’s jobs in manufacturing. Nowadays, 6 out of 10 positions are not filled due to a manufacturing skill gap. WHAT DOES NEED TO CHANGE? 1_DIVERSITY Diversity and profitability are directly correlated. Having teams with a lot…

12 billion IoT connections, surpassing non-IoT for the first time

Despite the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the market for the Internet of Things continues to grow. In 2020, for the first time, there are more IoT connections (e.g., connected cars, smart home devices, connected industrial equipment) than there are non-IoT connections (smartphones, laptops, and computers). Of the 21.7 billion active connected devices worldwide, 11.7 billion (or 54%) will be IoT device connections at the end of 2020. By 2025, it is expected that there will be more than 30 billion IoT connections, almost 4 IoT devices per person on average. This is one of many findings in IoT Analytics’ latest reports State of the IoT Q4 2020 & 2021 outlook as well as the updated Cellular IoT connectivity & LPWA Market Tracker 2010-2025 (Q4/2020 update). Compared to an analysis performed in mid-2018, IoT Analytics has now raised its forecast for the number of connected IoT devices in 2025 (from 21.5 billion to 30.9 billion). Several factors are driving the growth, most notably: China. IoT has been booming in China at levels that seemed unimaginable a few years ago. While in 2015, for example, Chinese telecom companies accounted for roughly one quarter (27%) of all cellular IoT connections, this number has shot up to 75% in 2020 with China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile leading the global cellular IoT connections market. Personal and home devices. The pervasive use of personal IoT devices such as fitness wearables further accelerated in the last 2 years and is expected to continue to…

How An Analytics System Can Help You Reshape The Culture Of Your Manufacturing Team

Written by Leonor Rocha | Customer Success at PackIOT Every organization has its own definition of culture. Even though we live in a globalized world, there will always be specific characteristics connected to the local and national culture that will define an organization. Culture can be regarded as a collaborative journey of sensemaking, which can be described as a process that involves the cooperation of all parts that compose an organization, in order to raise awareness and understanding from different perspectives and interests of their individuals. The culture of an organization has to be something in constant development, always shaping itself to the circumstances lived, as well as to the changes and to the evolution that occurs. So, whenever you decide to implement anything in your company, you should first think about your cultural roots. "It says that a crucial purpose of culture is to help orient its members to “reality” in ways that provide a basis for alignment of purpose and shared action." Creating the perfect data-driven team by reshaping the one you already have Data analytics is probably one of the buzzwords of this century. Everybody wants to be part of a data-driven…

QWERTY Stuck In Time. Gesture, Voice And Brain: The Future Of Controls.

By Eduardo Binotto, Software Engineer/IoT Developer at PackIOT Much is discussed about artificial intelligence, different ways of communication, languages, and manners to provide interaction between machines and human beings. But if we think about it, there is one area that has not progressed that far: the way we type. Patented in 1878, the QWERTY keyboard has been the main input device for computers since the birth of computing, having even been digitized into modern devices like our mobile phones. So, chances are that we will be typing, one way or another, for a long time to come. But, as technology evolves, new ways to interact with systems arise, and it’s important to stay up to date and see what the future may offer in terms of Human-Machine Interactions. Voice control One of them that has been gathering traction in recent years is the Voice Control. Many computing devices today are capable of understanding speech in a way that they can easily control things with just a simple voice command. Although the hype, a survey showed that 46% of the respondents said that they have never used voice assistants, and another 19% rarely use, revealing that there is…