Digital Resources

Smart Inspections Systems in the Industry 4.0 Era

Visited 4.6k

Information technology and communication systems are undergoing rapid development. New disruptive technologies, such as cloud computing, Internet of Things, Big data, and Artificial intelligence have emerged.

These technologies are now allowing many industries to enable the fusion of physical and virtual worlds through cyber-physical systems (CPS), which represent the Industry 4.0 era.

The development of CPS in multi-sites manufacturing environments renders the manufacturing systems smarter and manageable online.

The Key elements of smart Industry 4.0 are including, smart design, smart machining, smart control, smart monitoring, smart inspections and smart scheduling.

Key technologies and their possible applications to Industry 4.0 smart manufacturing systems are reviewed based on these demonstrative scenarios. Finally, challenges and future perspectives are identified and discussed.

Our topic here is to explained the key solutions available on the key markets allowing to smart inspections of your existing assets.

The first level of any asset inspection is certainly a visual inspection usually scheduled and carried out by the maintenance teams, in order to check any asset status.

Such actions are usually visual defects check such as corrosion, erosion or any deformation of surfaces mainly carried out in the industrial plants. Thermal inspections requiring the utilisation of infra-red camera are usually utilised for checking bad electrical connexion on switchboards.

These types of manual inspections carried out in the industrial sites or manufacturing plant can be replaced by the utilisation of integrated camera, allowing an ongoing and fully automated monitoring of assets. This continuous flow of information can certainly be displayed on remote monitoring systems and stored on data servers.

In the offshore and construction markets, the utilisation of such remote monitoring solutions is increasing with the utilisation of Drones or ROVs, now equipped with camera, Infrared camera, ultrasound sensors and are now capable to intervene on predefined GPS coordinates with the utilisation of positioning systems, giving the possibility for maintenance teams to focus on data review and not been exposed to high risks conditions.

Although industrial production plants are equipped with sensors capable of measuring current, voltage, position, speed, temperature speed, the next step is in the ability for any production site to automate the control check and sorting of any parts or products before being sent to the client.

The development of robots has allowed the development of automated internal logistics solutions for the industrial and e-commerce markets, leaving the transportation of goods to the clients which is still nowadays the only non-automated process.

The qualification of Smart solutions resides in the ability for these machines, robots to transfer and receive data in real time. Thanks to the high-speed communication systems allowing an automat or a distant server to identify scenario, issues and to transmit predefined curative actions in real-time.

Indonesian Supplies is focusing on the development of connected production sites, allowing us to receive, transmit and distribute productions orders to a digitally connected pools of manufacturers and logistic companies via the utilisation of a cyber-physical systems (CPS).