SetiBT, a specialist IT services provider based in Brazil, was approached by a large fuel and lubricant transportation company for an in-vehicle fuel transportation solution. The company operates a substantial fleet of tankers that supply fuel to remote locations such as sugarcane processing plants, construction sites, and mining operations. The challenge was to manage the fuel loading processes for specialist equipment in the field, inhibit fraud and fuel theft, and increase the accuracy of data acquisition to better control costs. The system also needed to be capable of automatically identifying the equipment being fueled, including tank size and type of fuel required, as well as synchronizing with the vehicle’s horometer, odometer, and GPS. These functions would offer a clear breakdown of each vehicle’s productivity, status, and risk, thereby providing customers with accurate data to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

CPC Corporation, Taiwan's leading enterprise in the development and supply of petroleum and natural gas, faced a challenge in ensuring operational efficiency in semi-outdoor environments. The company needed a high-performance POS system that could withstand environmental challenges associated with gas stations, including resistance to water, dust, shock, and oil. Additionally, the company needed to protect their customer database from unauthorized employee access, making traditional POS systems inappropriate.

The hypermarket industry is intensely competitive, and satisfying customer demands and increasing brand loyalty are the primary business challenges for Far Eastern A.mart. To increase customer loyalty, Far Eastern A.mart planned to establish loyalty programs that encourage increased purchasing. They wanted a wall-mountable POS system that could be used to check product prices and customer reward points in real-time to enhance the overall service quality.

DB Schenker, a globally active and integrated logistics service provider, aimed to implement new and innovative service stations that integrate delivery service orders, information inquires, and payment processing, to enhance customer convenience. The plan was to install self-service POS systems in convenience stores throughout Sweden. These self-service kiosks would allow customers to send and track postal packages, pay bills, and conduct other financial transactions autonomously. Because the POS systems would be operated by the customers themselves, the hardware needed to be extremely durable and reliable. Furthermore, to facilitate efficient and continual operation, easy-to-maintain hardware was required.

The automotive industry is characterized by high quality expectations, product variety, and process complexity. Globalization and increasing customer requirements have forced car manufacturers to offer a large range of vehicle models and options. This complexity, coupled with the pressure of international competition, makes efficient logistics a challenge. The industry also faces the challenge of ensuring that a vast variety of car components supplied by various sources in different countries is delivered to the production plant on time. This requires well-engineered mobile computing solutions. Another challenge is the just-in-sequence production principle, which requires the delivery of the correct individual automotive parts to every workplace in the production line, in the exact sequence in which the vehicles are being assembled.

Nippon Valqua Industries, a leading manufacturer of industrial packing and gaskets, faced the challenge of extending the service life of weld bellows. The bellows consist of an accordion-folded frame formed with elaborate metal disks cut out of corrugated plates, of which the inner and outer edges are alternately welded. The welded bellows have elastic and airtight features and are applied for seal application, such as ultra-high vacuum valves for the semiconductor industry, wafer processing equipment and single-crystal grower, as well as gyroscopes, accumulator and dampers used for aerospace vehicles. To extend the service life, it was critical to optimize the shape of corrugated plates comprising welded parts. For the design of welded bellows that receive concentrated reaction force on/around welded parts, it was critical to create a corrugated plate best suited to disperse such concentrated reaction force.

China’s metal manufacturing industry faces numerous challenges, including a lack of standardized communication interfaces, low-level intelligence in existing equipment, and a low level of informatization in existing systems. YCM, a leader in machine tool manufacturing, is not exempt from these challenges. With the advent of Industry 4.0 and new trends in IoT, YCM faces huge challenges in making their manufacturing smarter using digitized information and visualized data intelligence. Rapid changes in the marketplace, emerging market competition, limited resources and sustainability, slow growth, labor shortages and transitioning business integration are common problems in China’s metal manufacturing industry. To overcome these challenges, YCM needed to focus on process management that yields decreased time-to-market while delivering high-quality and competitive product pricing.

RE-DAI Precision Tools, a leading hand tool manufacturer in Taiwan, was facing significant challenges due to its traditional industrial manufacturing and management model. The company had a diverse portfolio of production machinery acquired over the years, which led to a haphazard approach to managing the machinery. The challenge for Impelex was to implement a real-time system that monitored machine operations and incorporated a mobile dashboard to prevent power outages and improve overall production efficiency. RE-DAI needed a fully mature communication solution to unify and control all the disparate systems on one platform.

Nippon RAD, a long-established IT system integrator in Japan, identified a significant challenge in the country's automotive industry. Many auto component manufacturers were struggling to effectively collect and visualize machine data from production lines, especially from different machines, purchased from different suppliers, each with multiple protocols. With an expanding portfolio of multi-branded production machinery acquired over a prolonged period of time, manufacturers felt unable to properly meet the challenges of increased competition and change management. The lack of real-time connectivity between people, machines, and devices, as well as information and communication technologies for the dynamic management of the ever-increasing complexity of the business process, was a major issue.

In Thailand’s export-oriented economy, manufacturing is the primary driver of economic development and growth. However, globalization provides increasing opportunities to sell Thai products around the world, it also fosters fierce competition between rival companies. In this ever more competitive market environment, manufacturers must leverage every innovation available to maximize the value and efficiency of their production lines. Yet, most factories in Thailand have limited space for new equipment. Facilities also vary widely in terms of environmental conditions and the ease of adding new cabling. Moreover, with limited margins leaving little funding for infrastructure investments, most Thai manufacturers cannot afford to even replace existing equipment. Considering these constraints, an effective equipment monitoring system must be sufficiently compact and flexible to allow installation in diverse factory environments and to support a wide range of machinery and equipment.

The production lines of a Japanese auto parts manufacturer required cutting-edge precision and coordination. The company faced a specific problem hindering the coordination of their production lines; namely, the inability to efficiently collect and visualize data from their FANUC CNC machines. The company needed a means of easily collecting and displaying data on power and air consumption as well as grinding wheel wear, which were to be used for machine analysis. However, the manufacturer’s in-house operations and IT engineers lacked the time and knowledge to establish an effective strategy.

A semiconductor equipment manufacturer in Korea was facing issues with their production line monitoring and management. The existing system lacked important capabilities needed for efficient data collection, visualization, and utilization. Individual line workers had no means of quickly reporting production problems, and important information regarding the problems that did occur often went unrecorded, allowing them to reoccur with unacceptable frequency. The company’s most critical need was ensuring the ability to collect, visualize, and utilize critical data as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The EMS company's clients were facing a challenge with their production line machines. Although various sensors collected critical data from these machines, the data was not consolidated in the cloud nor visualized to facilitate critical improvements to the production line and prevent costly interruptions. The company needed a solution that could provide seamless data integration and visualization to optimize production efficiency and preemptively maintain the machines to prevent unexpected system downtime.

The home appliance manufacturer in Thailand was facing challenges in tracking productivity and key parameters of the process. In modern manufacturing, production lines for different types of products share certain fundamental commonalities. By actively managing production line assets, manufacturers can ensure that production is optimized. However, the data provided by various production line assets is sometimes contradictory or unclear due to the sensors, meters, or PLC controllers being limited in connectivity or because different devices from different vendors may each have their own proprietary protocols.

The Indonesian manufacturer, a leading provider of key solutions to corporate partners worldwide, was seeking to enhance its production line efficiency. The company needed equipment monitoring solutions to bolster the output of its production line processes. The challenge was to find a solution that was compact and flexible enough to be installed in diverse factory environments and support a wide range of machinery and equipment. The company also faced budget constraints due to the realities of global competition, which limited funding for infrastructure investments.

Yeefung Robotics Technology, a leading provider of comprehensive Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) and revolutionary parking solutions in China, was seeking comprehensive hardware and AGV controller solutions. The company wanted to leverage the benefits of Industry 4.0 to ensure that robotics and AGVs work at maximum efficiency with virtually no downtime, leading to reduced costs and increased profits. However, to ensure comprehensive monitoring and flexibility, smart factory AGVs must perform multiple arithmetic operations at speeds that traditional programmable logic controllers (PLCs) simply cannot handle.

The Ching Luh Group, a leading sports footwear manufacturer, was facing the challenge of automating the collection of real-time production information from manual transcription. The traditional approach of manually recording and entering data into a computer system was cumbersome, slow, and prone to errors and inconsistencies. This outdated method prevented managers from having a firm grasp of the real-time production status, hindering the ability to make meaningful improvements. In today’s fiercely competitive market with rapidly changing customer demands, a shoemaker that persists with this outdated approach risks devastation at the hands of competitors. With the advent of Industry 4.0 and associated smart factory technologies, shoemakers and other textile manufacturers must adapt or die, sink or swim.

União Química, one of the biggest players in Brazil’s burgeoning pharmaceutical industry, was being held back by its reliance on outdated production methods. The firm’s managers found their production lines hampered by a low productivity and a lack of efficient quality monitoring, as well as a lack of remote connectivity enabling easy access to critical production line data. One key distinguishing feature in drug manufacturing is the necessity of carefully documenting each step of the production process for compliance. These strict requirements led pharmaceutical manufacturers to store production information in paper records for future reference, but this approach also made it difficult for production managers to make process improvements.

The industrial laundry firm, a key player in the textile and service industry, was struggling to transition to Industry 4.0. The firm was traditional and relied heavily on manual labor and old equipment, which lacked open communication interfaces for automation. The management needed to monitor the efficiency of both machines and workers in their large facilities and make use of visualization and data analytics to deploy efficiency initiatives. However, traditional PLC/HMI solutions were too expensive and not easily integrated into cloud-based solutions. Therefore, they needed a dedicated cloud-based application that would allow management to easily view their production efficiency across multiple locations throughout the country.

The Italian manufacturer of transmissions, engines, drivelines, and fasteners sought to develop a company-wide optimization program aimed at enhancing the asset management and energy consumption of their existing machinery and infrastructure. The goal was to improve the condition monitoring process and manage overall equipment effectiveness. The company required an open technology solution for data acquisition and monitoring that could support a range of different equipment and machines without replacing any existing hardware. The system also needed to be user-friendly for operators, with an easy-to-use and intuitive dashboard that could be viewed on a range of devices including smartphones and tablets.

The Brazilian manufacturer of consumer goods was facing challenges in maintaining the strictest standards for product quality due to the high volume and complexity of their production facilities. They needed to effectively monitor an extraordinary range of production lines while also maintaining rigorous standards of quality and efficiency. The manufacturer was looking for a solution that could help them actively manage production line assets, make adjustments to coordination, and avoid costly downtime through preventive maintenance. They also needed to ensure the integration of their MES, enterprise resource planning, and maintenance systems for improved machine availability, equipment homologation, and production line management.