Industry 4.0: the new challenge for the Italian textile machinery industry Executive Summary June 2017 by Contacts: Economics & Press Office Ph: +39 02 4693611 email: economics-press@acimit.it
ACIMIT has commissioned to RINA Consulting the study about to the Industry 4.0 with the aim to analyse and highlight the impact of such revolution in the textile machinery industry. The analysis aims to find the potential benefits and the main opportunities that an implementation of the Industry 4.0 framework can provide to the ACIMIT associated companies. Hereby, the main features and the results of the investigation are presented. The study focused on the following main points: Industry 4.0: definition and technological environment; Demand Analysis: trend and driver for the textile industry, with the identification of the relevant megatrends, the demand trend, providing also the innovation strategies carried out from textile industry; Textile machinery industry scenario analysis: the current situation, that was analysed through an online survey filled by ACIMIT associated companies, and the future perspective, in relation to which an intelligence analysis has been performed in order to recognize the capabilities gained by Industry 4.0 and real examples of technology innovation in textile machinery and manufacturing fields: Technology gap analys: is a possible roadmap to evolve from the current situation of the textile machinery industry towards the scenario expected from the industry 4.0 framework. Industry 4.0 and the enabling technologies Enabling Technologies The term Industry 4.0 is used to define a set of technology transformations in systems and products design, production and distribution and to describe the productive process organization that are based on communicating technologies and devices. The industrial production has no longer to be considered as a sequence of separated phases, but as an integrated flow, that is made possible by digital technologies. The 5 pillars of Industry 4.0 are: Speed: to reduce the time to market through innovation cycles and short product development Quality: to improve the processes and to reduce the waste through the real time monitoring of the production Flexibility: to make the offer more dynamic through the mass-customization in the production phases Security: to optimize the security issues in order to avoid inactivity periods and cyber attacks Efficiency: to increase the productivity with technologies and more intelligent services In September 2016, the Italian Ministry of Economic development presented the Piano Nazionale Industria 4.0 (the National Industry 4.0 Strategy), which provides concrete measures to support enterprises in favour of trigger investments in research and innovation in this area.
Trend and driver for the textile industry The strategic decisions to be implement at corporate level, especially when the company intends to be innovative, should be evaluated against the market macro trends. The megatrends act as a long-term development driver that impacts the business, the economy, the society, the cultures, and the lifestyle. They originate from the inevitable global changes shaping the world-to-be, defining a set of needs to be answered that cannot be influenced by single entities, groups of companies or even countries. Hence, the business strategy for innovation and development must consider these trend analyses and their involvement in the business. The trend analysis and the drivers of the textile industry, focused on the end user, allowed identifying how the business of this area will be influenced by the textile machinery market trends. MEGATREND Digitization and connectivity: the widespread of connected digital devices; Experience in consummation production: the transition from a product-based to an experiencebased economy; Sustainability and new business models: the growing population and the changes in the lifestyles require the development of new technologies and the implementation of new business models that will able to reduce the resource uses (water, materials, energy). DEMAND TREND Increasing of end-user autonomy (ecommerce expansion); Constant need of innovation as new products are continuously required (fast fashion); Constant expansion of low cost trends. In order to satisfy the user needs, the hardest challenge and opportunity in developing new processes and business models in the textile industry is the speed of the production processes (fast time to market and just in time production). The trend and driver analysis allowed identifying the strategic topics of innovation. The European textile and clothing industry is investing in response of the market macro trends. STRATEGIC TOPICS REGARDING INNOVATION 1. Advanced digitalized technologies and new business models 2. High performing and valuable intelligent materials 3. Circular economy and resource efficiency
Textile machinery industry scenario analysis Thirty-three ACIMIT associated companies were involved in drawing the current situation regarding the implementation of the Industry 4.0 in the textile machinery field. The analysis underlined the potentiality offered by the enabling technologies of the Industry 4.0 framework throughout the three phases of the textile machinery productive process: 1. Design and planning phase; 2. Production phase; 3. Use and maintenance phase. CURRENT SITUATION OF THE TEXTILE MACHINERY INDUSTRY Good knowledge regarding enabling technologies, especially about Cloud computing and 3D printing Usage of some enabling technologies with good results in the production phase, in particular regarding Cloud computing and Cybersecurity The need of the subsidies from Piano Nazionale Industria 4.0 The need to understand better how new technologies could be implemented in the industry An intelligence analysis highlighted the future perspective for the textile machinery industry, underlining a possible roadmap for the implementation of the enabling technologies of the Industry 4.0 in each of the productive processes three phases. The first actions needed in order to achieve the objective of being a 4.0 textile machinery enterprise are the implementation of communicating embedded technologies and, more important, the application of the Internet of thing (IoT) paradigm in the industrial production, the network of people, products and machines and the employment of automation systems for the production control and management.
Technology gap analysis Hereby, specific examples from textile machinery companies that have already implemented a 4.0 approach for each of the three phases of the textile machinery production process are described. The observation between the current situation, represented by the considered sample of companies, and the future perspective, represented by the roadmap, allowed to define what are the missing steps that a medium-sized textile machinery company need to implement in order to enable the Industry 4.0 scenario. For each step, the technology gap regarding hardware, skills and infrastructures has been evaluated. A feasibility study for the implementation of the identified enabling technologies has been defined for each phase: one star means that the gap is high, five stars represent a narrow gap. It appears that the production and the use and maintenance phases are organized to adopt and to implement the Industry 4.0 technologies: IoT systems and Artificial Intelligence algorithms are some practical examples for remote monitoring and predictive maintenance applications. The design and planning phase, instead, is far from the Industry 4.0 objective. Virtual reality and machine component simulation represent the first steps of innovation in this primary phase. PHASE 1 EXAMPLES DESIGN AND PLANNING Performance measurement of a component during the use phase in order to improve the component design, throughout the mechanical simulation to identify new geometries and materials. The application of virtual reality technologies for machine and components design, combined with simulation software that enable multi-user both local and remote collaboration. The 3D printing used to create prototype rapidly enables an agile collaboration between different productive sections and allows a new flexible and personalized design. PHASE 2 EXAMPLES PRODUCTION The use of embedded informatics of different production sections. Collaborative robot (cobot) integrated in the industrial network. Example of a robot capable to interact with each other in order to optimize the transportation inside the company. Advanced mobile video technologies to facilitate the collaboration and the sharing information between different productive divisions. Quality control system combined with gesture recognition technologies. 3D printing for the production in order to make changes rapidly in line with the requests. PHASE 3 EXAMPLES USE AND MAINTENANCE The utilization of intelligent management platforms with mobile devices for the monitoring of the work and the maintenance if needed. Sensors embedded on the machine for data acquisition that permits the machine and product monitoring and the communication with other divisions. Predictive maintenance to optimize the maintenance and reduce costs. Augmented reality applications to support the operator during the maintenance. SWOT analysis Industry 4.0 is focused on maximizing the synergies and the balance between the three key models of an enterprise: business, organizational and technological. The first two are related to intangible assets; while the third one represents the tool enabling the company to start an innovative process. In order to adopt an Industry 4.0 strategy, the use of new technologies alone is not enough. A cultural change in the company structure is needed by renovating the strategies the enterprise organization and involving people with precise skills.
From the business point of view, the use of data in order to create values is the greatest innovation introduced by Industry 4.0. The opportunity to manage a huge volume of data permits the companies to make real-time decision based on detailed information, otherwise non-available. These data acquisition, combined with a good production cycle management ability, will facilitate an achievement of high level of flexibility, a remarkable capability in product customization, an increasing quality, and more efficiency and productivity, enabling new business models. The organizational model regards about intelligence exhibited by machines and human-being intelligence, that is the distinctive trait that makes a person able to design these hi-tech systems and to communicate and collaborate with every team and corporate involved in the company. From the technological point of view, the digitalization of the enterprise is a must-do step in the innovation path and it must involve every employee. It is the only wat to implement these new enabling technologies. This kind of approach makes the company to be more and more valuable on the market and it permits to achieve new skills in order to improve its own offer and to innovate its own business model. This is possible also thank to the financial support issued by Piano Nazionale Industria 4.0. The main point of the study are summarized in the following SWOT analysis. STRENGHTS Speed: that can be achieved through the Industry 4.0 plan Flexibility: of the process and the product introduced by Industry 4.0 Domain knowledge: specific expertise and knowledge that every company has Quality: of the ACIMIT associated companies products, that is the starting point to be competitive Made in Italy: the well-known value of the Italian textile machinery production OPPORTUNITIES Trend and driver of the textile industry: fast fashion, low cost Financial contribution issued by the Piano Nazionale Industria 4.0 Servitization: new business model that associate the service offers (maintenance, reparation ) to the product Reshoring: local production Vehicle fleet replacement: the insertion of new machines thank to the financial aids and the new industry revolution sponsored by the Industry 4.0 WEAKNESSES The lack of specific knowledge about 4.0 technologies inside the ACIMIT associated companies Training: insufficient academic preparation, a training inside the corporation is needed Standard: the lack of a communication standard that allows the interoperability between different machines THREATS Time: the financial contribution is limited in time, so the ACIMIT companies must understand how to take advantage of this opportunity. Furthermore, the market demand time is really speed so the company organization must be revised in order to supply this trend Lead time: in order to deliver the product quickly to the client, the ACIMIT companies must face off the needed timing to find the required components from the vendors Data security: the hacking is the main issues related to the data acquisition and storage Privacy and data propriety: few expertise, also from the legal point of view
Industry 4.0: the new challenge for the Italian textile machinery industry Executive Summary June 2017 by Contacts: Economics & Press Office Ph: +39 02 4693611 email: economics-press@acimit.it