A major coffee manufacturer needed to reduce the percent of machines that were offline for cleaning. To keep the production rates steady, the manufacturer needed to purchase 100 extra machines to compensate for the offline equipment or find a better solution. The coffee manufacturer chose to implement an IoT solution to enable the coffee-production equipment to generate a real-time information stream regarding its operational state. This enabled the company to more effectively predict downtime and significantly decrease the extent of surplus equipment needed on the production line.

An automotive OEM was experiencing increasing warranty expenses and recall execution costs driven by a reactive approach to issue identification, the long turnaround time between issue identification and resolution, and the inability to track the effectiveness of production and field fix issues. Real-time data was captured by sensors on the manufacturing line and aggregated with quality, warranty, and safety data to populate a cloud-based data lake. Advanced analytical techniques, including text clustering, probability analytics, concept extraction, and event history were utilized to identify potential issues. Digital user interfaces were leveraged to drive user adoption and enhance employee ability to translate insights into action. An end-to-end set of dashboards was utilized to create visibility into priority issues, enabling the execution of field fix implementations sooner.

Calgary-based Nova Chemicals was struggling to process more than 20,000 maintenance work orders per year at each of its 11 chemicals and plastics resins manufacturing facilities. To improve its maintenance scheduling, the company introduced advanced analytics and cloud computing in collaboration with Enterprise Asset Management software (EAM). Today, the EAM software provides a complete and consolidated view of scheduled maintenance at Nova Chemicals. It facilitates maintenance scheduling, work execution, and material availability processes.

Force Protection Inc. (FPI) develops defense products and vehicles for the government. Their status as a government contractor means that FPI must conform to the strict government rules surrounding the communication of sensitive data. Failure to do so would result in fines or the loss of contracts. In response to this new need for security and accountability, FPI deployed MBE CAD data exchange software throughout its engineering teams, and the software is now used for all design and engineering data transfer.

HIROTEC America Automation manufacturing equipment and parts supplier with 26 facilities in 9 countries that designs and builds approximately 7 million doors and 1.5 million exhaust systems annually. Volumes of data were manually separated and stored across multiple sources. To improve quality, reduce downtime, and optimize production schedules, HIROTEC needed to implement a modern, automated solution that could gather maintenance and operational information into one source and offer actionable recommendations. HIROTEC turned to IoT and connectivity platforms to enable company-wide device-to-cloud connectivity through one overarching toolset. A manufacturing suite and IoT Gateway advanced plug-in was also part of the solution.

KUKA Industrial robotics manufacturer. KUKA seized the opportunity to integrate IoT systems when the company built a new facility in Toledo, Ohio for manufacturing Jeep Wrangler bodies. KUKA connected over 60,000 devices, including 259 assembly-line robots, into a central data management system. By linking the devices, line-of-business applications, and back end systems together, KUKA has achieved an automated manufacturing process capable of producing one of eight different Jeep Wrangler auto bodies every 77 seconds off the same production line without interrupting production flow.

Kaeser Kompressoren German-based manufacturer of compressed air systems and services.  To avoid unplanned outages and system downtime, Kaeser began equipping its compressed air equipment with IoT sensors that capture key environmental and performance data such as temperature, humidity, and vibration. With equipment continuously transmitting operational status in real-time, Kaeser conducts predictive analytics to determine whether parts might be prone to failure and to identify and replace faulty parts during regularly scheduled maintenance instead of after an outage has occurred. Kaeser upgraded to a relational database management system to orchestrate new business processes across the organization, improve supply chain management, and harness the power of big data analytics.

Lido Stone Works manufacturer of high-end architectural stone products. Seeking to realize a more-automated production environment, Lido Stone Works leveraged IoT to craft an intelligent manufacturing system that directly links Lido and their clients’ architects into a seamless, IoT-enabled cloud platform. The platform generates a real-time stream of information, and both the client and technicians can monitor a job’s progress in real-time, detecting, and fixing, problems as they unfold.

Logistics company Knapp AG developed a paperless picking technology that uses augmented reality to optimize the picking process in a warehouse. This wearable technology resembles eyeglasses and is worn as a headset by the employee.

Samsung began by implementing the MBE CAD data exchange software at its Visual Display and Printer Divisions. The MBE CAD data exchange software allowed Samsung to more easily share quality data between various systems including design, collaboration, and data management. Multiple in-house applications utilize MBE CAD data exchange software as a secure backend server, for translations and validation. Samsung’s new data exchange software is also linked to its global suppliers.

Thales implemented MBE CAD data exchange software to automate the flow of product data among its internal users. The web-based system provides a convenient, reliable and secure method for translating engineering data. This will be expanded in the second stage of implementation to include data transmission between Thales and its customers and suppliers.

The Customer Supplier Interoperability (CSI) program was sponsored by the Department of Defense and the US Air Force Research Laboratory, ManTech division. The program’s goal was to develop solutions for engineering inefficiencies associated with technical data exchange and to accelerate the adoption of Model-Based Definition (MBD) methodologies in defense supply chains. Through the automation of manual tasks, CAD validation, and advanced toolsets, the CSI program paves the path toward MBD for the defense industrial base.

Touch International is a supplier of high-quality touch screens and touch screen components for a variety of applications in medical, industrial, military, aerospace, retail, and gaming industries. Touch International implemented inspection planning and reporting software for all of their first articles. The software is able to balloon and extract drawings in one step, and export directly into an AS9102 report template.

U.S. Navy Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) Model-Based Definition (MBD) Case Study: NAWCAD Lakehurst is the center of excellence for Aircraft Launch and Recovery Equipment (ALRE) and naval aviation Support Equipment (SE). NAWCAD moved to a 3D MBD environment, which required the conversion of conventional 2D drawings to a 3D digital product definition. 3D PDFs containing digital product definition became the single source of data through the product development process.

UTC Aerospace sought to reduce First Article Inspection (FAI) template creation time. The solution included using First Article Inspection software. Utilizing their previous methods, they were able to make one template in 8 hours on average. Through implementing this change and monitoring the number of Inspections made UTC was able to clearly see how the software was able to reduce cycle time for template creation.

Volvo Car Corporation wished to enable better communication with its suppliers and to transfer the design responsibility of parts and subsystems to those suppliers. Utilizing an electronic product data management system (ePDM), they were able to implement these changes and create a digitalized engineering change environment that was real-time with defined expectations of the priority and speed at which the ECOs were performed.