Why Industry 4.0 Is So Important To Integra

As a design-focused operation, Managing Director Paul Hughes considers Industry 4.0 (I4.0) to be paramount at Integra Systems for many reasons: to drive better productivity across the factory; improve the quality of everything to which they put their name; make it easier for designers and manufacturers to collaborate productively with their customers; and to increase staff morale and overall satisfaction for the people who help make Integra stand out from the competition.

To make Integra’s own Vision Real, Paul talks about bringing all of the many varied aspects of their production process together in a new kind of synchronicity to meet the demands of the next generation in manufacturing. Accordingly, I4.0 has played a pivotal role in making that happen.

“Our vision of Industry 4.0 was the ability to be able to link a whole group of subsystems together,’ explains Paul. “In doing that, the vision was to then streamline things from a scheduling and workflow point of view in the factory to increase productivity, as well as to have the ability to measure your KPIs on the spot by comparing live data out of the machines, with data that was quoted through the ERP systems. We hired a computer scientist and electronics engineer to write the software and gather the machine data to bring this all together within our own manufacturing environment."

"All of this was really to ensure that the system delivered high-quality products organically.”

CAD is king

One of the main objectives for Paul and his team has been to make CAD the master of the process, as opposed to other organisations who may rely on their ERP as the driving force.

While Paul isn’t denying the importance of a solid ERP system in manufacturing operations, he admits to witnessing too many instances where organisations making ERP-based strategy decisions become limited in what they can and cannot do. For Integra’s dynamic manufacturing environment, maintaining agility is essential and relying on ERP can potentially restrict that agility.

“We didn’t want that,” he says. “We just wanted to use the ERP system for what it is — which is a framework — and have the freedom to use the CAD as our master. We’re a design-led company, so we want everything to start with the CAD then flow down to the ERP and then into production.”

“We’ve also found over the years that, in your manufacturing systems and your ERP that you run your business with, it’s not a one-product-fits-all scenario,” he continues. “We started to discover that we needed a certain way of doing things in one area, and a different way of doing it in other areas.” 

“We had a few systems that were good in their own right but they weren’t completely linked together. The principles of I4.0 have helped us design ways to integrate those systems in a much more efficient way. Using IoT (Internet of Things) it’s enabled us to pull together the best bits from a lot of different systems into one cohesive interface.”

For Paul, the improvements I4.0 delivers in quality make everything worthwhile.

“A lot of manufacturers have a quality system or processes in place where inspection of parts and so on is critical,” he explains. “But our philosophy is to put the best tools in the hands of the operators, and then equip them with the most up-to-date information they can possibly get. By doing it this way, quality becomes an inherent thing, rather than an expedited thing.”

What I4.0 looks like at Integra

The factory floor at Integra looks very different these days, with every work centre fitted with 42-inch touchscreen kiosks – Integra’s own K4.0 hardware designed and developed in-house.* The K4.0 kiosks streamline operations by enabling personnel to access part schematics, plans, and animations and 3D drawings (as well as manipulate those drawings), while also capturing engineering change requests and directly engaging customers in the manufacturing process.

As well as production efficiencies, Integra’s kiosks provide the opportunity for better collaboration and communication across every stage of the design and manufacture process. Every kiosk is equipped with video conferencing capability. Alongside real-time internal conferences, operators or the design team can link externally, which means clients and suppliers can also be brought into meetings without being physically present.

"Prototyping, for example, can be done while having the customer virtually right there at the machine with you,” says Paul.

The touchscreen kiosks also house Integra’s CAD, scheduling and ERP system. “So, all of our engineering data, like CAD and animations, are at the fingertips of our operators in the factory. And we’re feeding live machine data into that as well.”

“Outside of work, everyone’s familiar with iPads and smartphones, and how they operate," Paul continues. "So, we’ve tried to bring that into our operations and what they’re doing as part of their work. That makes it a more fun way of doing things, and a more familiar way of doing things, as opposed to reading a drawing. It’s completely digitising the environment. We’ve basically gone paperless and created a digital manufacturing environment.”

Robotics are also an important aspect of operations at Integra as part of the overall commitment to I4.0. As Paul details, “We’re focusing a lot on COBOT (collaborative robot) systems. We’ve employed a team whose focus is solely on I4.0, robotics and the design of our K4.0 kiosks: a computer scientist, an electrical engineer and a mechatronics engineer.” 

“For us, apart from robotics changing the physical look of our facility, they're going to be continuously improved and worked on here,” he adds. “It’s about having useful tools that enable our designers and manufacturers to come up with high-quality products. At the end of the day, it’s about having a really strong set of features that actually do something for you, rather than a whole bag of tricks that you never use.”

Most of all, for the team at Integra, I4.0 is important because of the possibilities it opens. “Committing to I4.0 really gives you a point of difference,” he explains. “It gives your business a level of transparency that people can really see, like a window into the core of how your business operates.”

“We’ve had many quality audits performed on us by defence customers, and when you go through the process with the auditors, it’s quite easy to explain what you do because they can see it all through this transparent interface.”

"It’s a pretty complicated business because there are a lot of parts that we manufacture,” Paul concludes. “But the process is quite simple. We’ve presented it in a way that simplifies a complicated system. As a system, once the foundation is there, the more you delve into it, the more possibilities open up for what you can do with it.” 

*Integra’s digitisation outcomes have so impressed clients that the K4.0 kiosks are now available commercially.