Last time we talked a lot about Industry 4.0, and you could almost think that there is no more secrets to that, but that is not the case.
This is a complex and very articulate topic, where many concepts seem hard to grasp, especially for the many entrepreneurs who still cannot understand the new rules of the game. The world is moving forward without cease, technology is proceeding at a mad speed and not keeping up with this pace could be our downfall, making us strangers in a new word. In the previous article we talked a lot about theory, we told ourselves how things could work out broadly, but now it’s time to see it out with our own eyes. Around the world, the functioning examples of Industry 4.0 are already many, and analysing some, interesting ideas could be applied in our joinery.
Before starting, however, I shall ask you two things:
1) Do not think that these case studies, being industries, have nothing to do with little craftsmanship, because that is not the case.
It’s important to put in the effort and try to understand how ideas used in other fields can also be applied to your home.
In this regard, I will try to make practical examples along woodworking while showing you that even if some ideas might seem futuristic, some are actually already reality, reality you should start considering seriously.
2) Understand that today the difference between industry and craftmanship is disappearing more and more.
There are small companies, at least in terms of size, with high level technology and information, making it possible to produce profits and customer satisfaction superior to larger companies not sufficiently supported by organizational / decision tools.
We all know that volumes have reduced, we all perceive that this situation will not change for a long time, so for this reason, our companies must be able to manage profitably, no matter the request.
On the threshold of 2020, the size of a company or its turnover are no longer the relevant variables that define advantages or disadvantages.
Today the true competitive advantage of a company, regardless of size, is the level of formalization of internal / external processes that can be achieved only through the use of increasingly advanced technologies and software.
Knowing all of this, let’s start…
A classic example when it comes to Industry 4.0 are 3D printers.
The 3D printer is something revolutionary, and thanks to this technology, many customers can produce what they need directly at home.
I do not think everyone can clearly understand what this means, so I’ll try to explain it using these simple words … the industrial effort to produce a good is moved to the consumer.
With 3D printers one could print / produce everything, even whole houses.
Thanks to this technology, a supplier does not send pieces anymore, but a program for you to create that product yourself, but isn’t this absurd ???
Thinking about it, sooner or later, the hardware manufacturer could send you a file and you’ll be able to print hinges, handles. You could print a cutter and develop a new product.
Do you begin to understand what I mean by saying that things are changing?
Science fiction? No, you just need to know that human bones are already printed today.
Another interesting and curious case is our Italian excellence, Lamborghini.
Lamborghini does not make big numbers in terms of production, we assume about 30 items per day, making it a prime example for joinery.
In Lamborghini they have preserved their craft nature, adapting it to a small series production of highly exclusive cars, through one of the most advanced production systems in the world.
Through the use of modern technologies, they are able to work with the same level of perfection and complexity for each phase of production, creating the components and making them available when they are needed.
Each phase of work is equipped with touchscreen tools that indicate the operations in need to be carried out from time to time, displaying specific ingo of the car, providing checklists and stores.
All tools are designed to guarantee total absence of errors and maximum working precision.
For example, the electric screwing machines, to be used only respecting the pre-established order, are programmed to deliver the right torque for each screw in addition to memorizing the most important operations.
Are we so sure that producing a Lamborghini is so different (in terms of production organization) from producing a window or a piece of furniture?
The last (but not least) example is related to robots.
I guess you know about kitchen robots, automatic lawnmowers, deep down you may think of a robot as a useless pile of iron, only able to cut carrots or keep the grass looking good for your ping pong spot. By the way, who does not like playing ping pong? Ping pong is an Olympic sport, it’s easy to agree on the fact that you have to be quick, smart, reactive to play ping pong, right?
But let’s say that you would like to play ping pong but never find friends to do it with, well, Omron has thought of this and created Forpheus, namely the latest generation of robots, built to train ping pong players.
Forpheus works through 2 cameras, a series of advanced sensors and a sophisticated software that contains artificial intelligence algorithms, following the ball and adjusting its style of play based on the evaluation of 80 different factors per second.
Today, robots no longer cut carrots, and if they are able to play ping pong, try to imagine how much they could do for our companies.
Of course it was not my intention to terrorize you, it is only right that you know that, for now, Forpheus has not been programmed to ever beat his opponent.
Well, we made some examples and we realized that today incredible technologies are available, able to do what was unthinkable a few years ago … so how can we transform our joinery in JOINERY 4.0?
Woodworking could make a company, and like all companies, it must produce and then sell.
Did I say it right? No, unfortunately this is completely wrong.
If we lived in the 80s maybe I would have been right, but the 80s were a while ago. In the 80s it was enough to produce something, you could produce anything and people would queue outside, wanting to buy windows, stairs, furniture … but not today.
Today the mechanism has been reversed and therefore we should ask ourselves “if it does not sell, why produce it?”.
Today the rule is “first sell, then produce”, it’s important to understand this, because without this important notion Joinery 4.0 could as well be just a dream.
And even if we understand this new rule, it could still be not enough, because there are still two important steps: marketing and control.
Marketing is that set of activities prior to the sale, which have the purpose to define the sale itself. Although I consider this aspect of primary importance in the current market, it is not the purpose of this article to articulate on that.
Control is the ability to process the huge set of data that sales and production generate, defining statistics and info that could help to understand in real time, where woodworking is going and thus allowing the development of strategic and informed decisions.
So JOINERY 4.0 needs 4 points: marketing, sales, production and control.
Starting from this theoretical assumption, let us try to define in a very practical way all the functions necessary to “arm” your carpentry for this new industrial revolution.
In the chain of functions, first of all comes the marketing, and woodworkers must begin, at least, to familiarize with the concept of CRM software (Customer Relationship Management), ie customer contact data, in order to be able to have information about them and use them to solicit them through new business proposals.
Since American studies have shown that 64% of the decision-making process that leads a customer to purchase takes place before the customer physically comes into contact with the company, it becomes easy to understand how, on the marketing side of things, a woodworker should care about other stuff.
Then the sales force comes into play, where through specific software it must be possible to generate quotes or quotation variations in a fast and automatic way.
These estimates must often be based on costs, while never being metaphorical, since one of the key principles of Industry 4.0 is to be able to earn even on small and varied orders. It is not only important to deal with customers quickly but also and especially in a precise and analytical way.
During the sale phase, a first form of control is necessary to understand which products are best-selling, where and what are the highest margins, which are the most profitable areas, where the orders are closed more quickly, any performance of individual agents and so on…
In the information path, we could say that once the order starts it must give life, based on the stock, to orders to suppliers based on criteria such as price, respect of delivery times, quality of material … while also keeping up with a calendar that takes into account company resources (machines, people, materials).
At this point, we could start talking about production. For example, wood warehouses could be completely robotised, a rotating structure, partially underground and composed of boxes, where the operator types wood codes and the warehouse rotates until casing, as it happens with drinks in vending machines. To physically pick up wood there could be the necessary need for a man, but since we know that robots are now playing ping pong, a robot able to take the wood from boxes and put them on the miter / optimizer would not be that strange. Having these resources in place could allow for our pieces to end directly on the molder and subsequently in the “wetting machine”.
Once the pieces have dried, ready for processing, it’s the turn for automatic resources, such as cnc routers or high-production lines, advanced machines that are able to process pieces for each work phase with absolute precision and without manual intervention. Moreover, during these processes, the machines are interconnected (keyword for the hyper-depreciation at 250%) to the management software and exchange data to track progress in real time.
And we are ready for painting, where laser recognition machines identify the shape to be painted with infinite shades of colour available. Also hardware, accessories will be found directly at the assembly desks and will find the right elements to be mounted at that time. Once the product is finished and maybe needs assembly, assembling technicians can, through the company’s web application, insert in real time how many kilometres they have done, how much time they have put, thus obtaining full control of the real costs of the assembly. At this point it is easy to understand how a huge amount of data will be generated every hour, every day, allowing to create data graphs and static info easy to understand, which will help defining if the individual parts of the company are generating profits or losses.
At first glance, all of these hypotheses on how Joinery 4.0 could be, can be scary, can make you think that it is almost easier to produce a Lamborghini instead of a wooden product (window, cabinet, staircase, …) but at the end of the day, thinking about where we are now, after the Internet appeared on the face of the earth only 26 years ago, everything leads to think that it could be that easy to have success, and in all honesty, in 10 years there could be no woodworking outside 4.0.
In the next part we will begin to discover some things about software, which for what we understood in the last 2 articles focused on the near future, represents a very important part of the whole process. See you next time!