U.S. manufacturers of all sizes are interested in deploying automation to increase their throughput, augment their workforce gaps, and, as a whole, strengthen their operations. It can be overwhelming to even understand where to start with automation; concerns like the time spent on automation projects, the capital investment and expertise needed to get started, how automation will affect existing operations, and other issues can sputter manufacturers’ progress.
For these reasons and others, it’s critical to first understand how to measure the success of deploying automation. By keeping this at the forefront of your efforts, you can better understand your goals throughout the deployment process and adjust accordingly.
Lessons Learned
In my career, I’ve defined automation deployment success as launching the project on time and on budget with a rapid ramp-up to meet target production metrics without serious safety and cyber security incidents. To successfully deploy automation, it's critical to identify common risks and make a plan to mitigate them.
What can limit your success in different settings? For new facility or production line (Greenfield) projects, late automation project launch is particularly serious if it delays launch of the entire building. Retrofit projects done during live production must be completed within allocated time windows with minimal disruption to continuing operations.
Other factors that may limit your success are change orders. Change orders are a common source of delays on large, complex projects that have negative financial impact due to lost production and exceeded contingency budgets. If the project includes separate parallel engineering, construction, supplier, and integration teams, geometric clashes between equipment and building infrastructure are often not discovered until on-site. Early and continuous cross-functional coordination of internal and external teams is integral to minimizing change order risk.
Differences in predicted construction also carry heavy risks. Building column locations may be two to six inches off from design drawing, due to standard concrete construction tolerances. Clashes can be detected in Building Information (BIM) Models by integrating 3D laser scanned “as built” reality capture of building, infrastructure, and existing equipment point clouds with CAD models for the new automation system. All installation teams should use common survey points and datums on the installation floor.
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