Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1463464
58 SMT007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2022 An overspend of just a few cents on materials, energy, correction of defects, etc., can rapidly erode expectations for profitability, forcing up prices to a greater extent than many expect. Extreme costs of smart automation, therefore, have their effects if ROI is not rapidly achieved. e risk, however, is that in most gold rush examples, the effects are achieved slowly, a risk most manufacturers in the industry have been willing to accept. As movies have recorded the history of squabbles and sacrifices made by those who rushed to be the few successful prospectors to make their fortunes in "them thar hills," I won- der whether the pioneers of smart manufac- turing will be regarded in the same way. Gold today represents a very reliable, predictable, and safe investment, making or preserving money in a more ordered and controlled way, which, other than the occasional heist or two, allows everyone to work together. For smart manufacturing, the same condition is emerg- ing, with increasing interoperability of solu- tions and data, based on standards specifically developed within the industry for this purpose. Solutions that adopt these standards, and the core principles on which they are based, are the solutions that make smart Industry 4.0 via- ble, thus enabling it to deliver a very reliable, robust, and sustainable ROI. e fundamental principles that are common to the best of these standards are the essential ingredients that make the use and adoption of smart manufacturing solutions cost effec- tive and relatively risk-free. ey are discussed below. IoT/IIoT Messaging vs. Integration/Interfaces e use of messaging enables different appli- cations and solutions to become interopera- ble and complementary to each other without depending on licensing of shared proprietary code, and hence intellectual property (IP). In the gold rush, many companies expanded their For these companies to "strike gold" was easy in some respects—assuming that there was enough investment available to meet the needs of bespoke solution development. is is because of the lobbying of machine vendors, utilization of middleware, and to financially assist custom solution providers to develop bespoke and specialist pieces of soware, was based loosely on older industry standards and proprietary technologies. e downside of the approach was the inability to show a convinc- ing ROI, especially considering the risks that had to be accepted with unplanned downtime as solutions needed to be adjusted and refined. e sustainability of such gold rush solutions has now become a real operational and finan- cial burden as both requirements and technol- ogies inexorably move forward. e nice aspect about this early gold rush is that it has fractured the paradigm that manu- facturing has been an area of short-sighted, tightly controlled investment. From the OEM perspective, manufacturing is a not-for-profit operation that simply converts raw materi- als into final products for sale with all associ- ated profits accounted to the sales organiza- tion. ere is extreme sensitivity in the man- ufacturing cost, as by the time the product has gone from the factory to the final point of pur- chase, the cost will have been marked up by 10, 100, or even 1,000 times (in extreme cases). The sustainability of such gold rush solutions has now become a real operational and financial burden as both require- ments and technologies inexorably move forward.