Smart Factory via Location-Aware Digital Twin

The Company

For a leading global construction and agriculture machinery manufacturer

Based in Germany, this international manufacturer operates one of Europe’s most modern production facilities, producing all-wheel steered wheel loaders, teleloaders and telescopic loaders for construction, agriculture, landscaping and other industries.

The Challenge

Eliminating error-prone, manual scanning and production steps for reliable manufacturing processes and quality assurance

Manufacturing of heavy machinery, like the large construction equipment of our customer, requires a high degree of production steps. Historically carried out manually, these steps need to be accounted for after assembly completion, and across each cycle to all next. Different model variants for the machines they are producing add even more complexity, which makes it difficult to monitor varying production parts and processes and ensure all quality standards are met. This concerns factors like quality assurance, scanner-based booking and cycle control of individual production steps throughout the entire assembly line, which at our client’s plant, consists of several pre-assembly and main assembly lines.

The Solution

Real-time location and tracking along the production line

With intelligent production control, we equipped this organization with a smart factory solution to power Industry 4.0 use cases and future digitization endeavors. 

The production line was equipped with a real-time location system, which provides workers with accurate real-time information about the production status and location of boxes, containers, load carriers, and racks located on the assembly line. The information is digitized and visually displayed as a digital twin via the INTRANAV.IO RTLS platform.

Workers can see in real-time: 

• Which material is used in which cycle
• Where material replenishment may be required
• Whether the production steps are running synchronously
• Whether there are time deviations
• To what extent delays are to be expected

Individually defined virtual cycle zones (geofences) mean that the production cycle is automatically recorded as completed when the production piece and the load carrier are moved through different virtual zones. As a result, the next cycle can know the status of a previous step in real-time and when complete, start with its own. This automatic cycle feedback ensures quality standards are met, processes steps are monitored and validated, and eliminates human error or omitted sequences. It also saves workers valuable time, as manual scanning is no longer necessary.

Key Benefits

With the intelligent production control system

• Real-time assembly line overview and end-to-end process transparency for variant production, retrievable as a real-time digital twin
• Automatic cycle feedback via virtual zones
• Eliminated manual scanning processes via Auto-ID bookings
• Cycle-related automation triggers to ensure automated retrieval of worker information, e.g., checklists
• Triggers for additional cycle-specific production processes via PLC connection
• High cm-level location precision for real-time visibility to power advanced use cases
• Cost effective solution, fast project implementation and integration through turnkey RTLS
• Operational optimization through industrial integrations with common ERP, EWM and CRM systems and databases, as well as analytics tools such as Power BI, SQL Server and more
• Open device interface that can acquire position and sensor data from multiple technologies such as UWB, GPS, DGPS, RFID, BLE, xMesh, and LiDAR
• High data security via cloud, on-prem, or hybrid deployments

If our production solution is of interest to you, contact us to discuss optimization possibilities for your manufacturing and logistics workflows today!