MT CONNECT
QUICK FIRE QUESTIONS :
Dr Stephan Biller , CEO of Advance
Manufacturing International ( AMI ) and Trustee of MTConnect
What does a factory of the future look like with MTConnect ? “ All the decision-making is going to be data-driven in some cases with the humans in the loop , in many cases , without humans in the loop . It will be sustainable , flexible , and agile .”
instead of having the engineers in the company go through manuals to learn the proprietary and communication protocols .
How will this benefit a manufacturing company ? “ AMI and MTConnect will help a manufacturer on that journey to the digital transformation because it allows you to collect the data in a very inexpensive way and then use that data to make better decisions for throughput , quality , cost , and fulfilment , which is the KPI in every factory .”
Digitisation - driven by the human touch Despite the focus on digital transformation , Biller admits the human aspect is critical to its development . “ It is vital that the people who are using these tools help to install them and even contribute to developing them as this gives them ownership .
“ You must start with the basic data collection , then maybe the visualisation of the data , and move to decision support , a little bit more analytics , then you get two optimisations , and only finally you get to automation of decision-making , and you need to do this at the right space speed . It ’ s critical everyone in the factory knows what is going on and that you provide an opportunity for feedback .
“ If you don ’ t bring the people along in the digital journey , you will fail .”
DID YOU KNOW ...
What technology are you most excited about in the future ? “ Many people talk about Artificial Intelligence ( AI ), but I would expand on that to AI and real-time system optimisation driven by cloud , 5G and IoT .
Is AMI planning to expand into Europe ? “ As the name suggests , AMI ( Advanced Manufacturing International ) is a global company , so we are currently working with another consortium called European Institute of Innovation & Technology ( EIT ) to transfer and share technologies across the Atlantic . MTConnect is already in Europe providing standard communication interfaces to many machine tools . technologymagazine . com 243