Multotec's Digital Transformation continues
By embracing the digital transformation, Multotec is increasing its sustainability and competitiveness in value-adding products, speed to market and cost.
The Multotec 4IR (4th Industrial Revolution) forum recently conducted a survey to better understand opportunities for improvement with the use of technology in Multotec. It was an extremely worthwhile exercise, and some valuable insights and relevant solutions were gathered from the survey.
Most of the responses could be categorised into three domains of business: Multotec products, Multotec production capabilities and Multotec processes.
Renier van Rooyen
Multotec Business Systems Executive
Digital Products
The market is demanding more intelligent and smarter products, and Multotec is meeting this requirement in a variety of ways. One such innovation is through the addition of sensors onto our cyclones to monitor cyclones operation conditions. Using AI, operation anomalies like choking or tramp metal can be flagged to the plant operators.
Although since inception Multotec has predominantly been a physical product sales organisation, the challenge is now for sales, application engineers and product development teams to identify opportunities to add value to customers, with a focus on digital technology, sensors, data, information, and analysis.
Digital Production Capabilities
Significant time and productivity are lost due to information to-and-from the shop floor and the lack of transparency into the plant health.
Connecting production equipment and processes to manufacturing execution systems can enable operators and production management to improve the speed, quality and cost of production.
Imagine operators downloading the job details to their machine HMI (no printed documents!). Supervisors can receive alerts and messages as soon as an event is triggered. Management can analyse the reasons for failure and pro-actively reduce downtime.
Plant operators, supervisors and managers alike need to look for opportunities to add digital technology to the production areas to eliminate paper-based, manual capturing and analysis of information.
Digital Processes
In our business processes there are numerous opportunities to digitise and reduce manual and paper-based processes. The following examples relate to Multotec:
- Use barcode scanners to record PO receipts, cycle counts, production recording
- Use Brainware technology to read supplier invoices and automatically capture the data in JDE
- Use OnBase to digitise the many paper-based forms and workflows in Multotec. A form can be completed online on a PC or phone and then be electronically approved
- Use the JDE MRP system to analyse the supply and demand of material and items and recommend actions in terms of updating dates and raising/cancelling orders, etc.
The issue of transparency featured numerous times in the 4IR survey feedback. Customers, sales functions and managers want to be able to see where a job is or where in the process a request is without having to call around. Having a digital twin of your process and accurate data gives all stakeholders transparency into the process.
Culture of Innovation
At Multotec, every one of our staff responsible for a process, tool or product is also responsible to drive innovation through digitisation around that area. It is critical that as digital transformation projects commence, each stakeholder makes it a personal goal to embrace the possibilities of the digital transformation at Multotec. We’re challenging the status quo in order to improve our products, production and systems to our customers!
