2023

Fortaco’s DIY 4.0

Fortaco’s approach to Industry 4.0 allows it to do things on its own terms, controlling speed, costs, and autonomy over its data.

Industry 4.0 is a fashionable term, and great to throw around at cocktail parties. But the idea of Industry 4.0 can manifest itself differently in different companies. For Fortaco, it means “everything connected,” in the words of Andrzej Wrona, Operational Excellence Director.

"The first industrial revolution was steam,” says Wrona, “the second electrification and mass production, and the third automation, such as robots. Now, the fourth revolution allows everything to be connected, meaning those robots may now talk to each other."

Wrona says autonomous cars are a good example of Industry 4.0 technology in action. "Take two cars without drivers. The one in front brakes for a pedestrian, the other car is immediately informed and slows down, making a collision nearly impossible." So what if you could do the same thing in a factory? What would it look like? It would look like Fortaco.

Do it yourself?

Given that Fortaco benchmarks itself to the auto industry, one might imagine factories teeming with data scientists and consultants collecting data and building data architecture. One might imagine hundreds of millions invested into startups – as Porsche has done – to develop technology.

But Fortaco's strategy has been to use a DIY (do it yourself) approach. "If you hire outside it's expensive," says Wrona. "So when we go outside we're looking more for teachers, rather than companies who can sell us something." It's all in the name of maintaining flexibility. And it means that the famous tools of digitalization are adapted and applied as needed.

Here are six examples of how Fortaco is applying Industry 4.0 to the workplace:

1. ‘Uber’ for internal logistics

In Fortaco's steel fabrication plant in Wrocław, data is used to manage the transportation of goods between work stations. "Wrocław's layout is complicated," says Wrona. "Production spaces are separated from one another, requiring us to move items in production from one hall to another. We used to use emails, calling, whistling, or shouting, but we've now developed an app that works a bit like Uber.”

Much like ordering an Uber car, a worker inputs the need to move a product from one station to another for further processing. The forklift driver sees this in the form of a virtual ticket representing the job, with his name assigned. Having this information, the driver moves the goods. When completed, the operator marks the job as done, and everyone can see the product has been moved. This is a digital mirroring (a digital shadow) of production. “The app shows where everything is, and we also eliminate the need for planners to go to the shop floor trying to find out the production status of each product,” says Wrona.

2. Priority parts in Kurikka

Late parts are a headache for most manufacturing companies. It's often necessary to order missing parts using express couriers. But parts arriving priority may still end up in standard channels, queuing with serial deliveries, meaning urgent parts can be internally delayed due to missing information. "We had poor information flow," says Wrona. "It meant a part might sit on a shelf for two or three days without production knowing it had arrived."

The team created an app which allows the prioritization of urgent materials, ensuring they move to the production line. The purchaser marks urgent goods within the app, and the information appears on a large screen in the receiving area. The app has enabled everyone to be informed about urgent parts and they are fast tracked.

3. Modern warehouse management

The Kurikka business site has implemented a warehouse management system for precise stock management. Every single part has a digital shadow in real time, which shows precisely what material is available, avoiding surprises and line stoppages caused by missing components.

"Everything that comes into the factory is scanned," says Wrona. "If I put five parts on a shelf, the system knows it. When parts go to production the system generates a list, and the pickers are directed to the correct storage destinations.”

The system monitors material movements and ensures high-quality logistics services to production. Machine learning also comes into play, since the algorithm uses historical data to designate optimal box placement. "It's reduced picking time significantly," says Wrona, "and it talks to our ERP system, informing our SAP about what needs to be ordered."

4. Tracking equipment utilization

Data can also shed light on investment decisions. Welding robots, for example, are expensive investments, and it’s critical to understand how those Fortaco has already invested in are used.

A pilot solution has been implemented in Fortaco’s Holíč plant, where IoT sensors track and record welding robot performance. A camera monitors knob position and informs an algorithm whether the robot’s status is automatic, manual, or off. A separate sensor monitors power consumption, collecting data about welding arc time. These two pieces of information provide an understanding of whether investment is producing a return, and what obstacles may stand in the way of efficiency.

Since data never lie, Wrona says it's sometimes been a revelation on the floor. "When a display shows poor utilization of equipment some have taken it as a challenge. 'Is it really true?' an operator said. 'So much underutilization? I don't accept it! I'll change it for the better.' And he really did change it!"

5. Visualizing data in Holíč

Data changes behavior, and displaying the efficiency of a robot has meant its uptime has increased. "It becomes a game," says Wrona. "People do what is necessary to make the bar rise."

Another good example is the visualization of actual operating time versus the target. "We managed to access data from our time registration system," says Wrona, "and we added some easy-to-understand visualization capability to the system’s built-in functionality." Data in the form of graphs is made available to assemblers so they can monitor their performance in real time. "Production planners, sales people, and process engineers make very good use of visualized data. It removes opinion from the equation and helps us know that we're making good decisions."

6. How data affects culture

Data is also great for what Wrona calls "small kaizen things." Getting workers to apply 5S techniques has never been easy. "People have other priorities and it just doesn't happen. But we know that many small improvements made frequently are effective, and we know production people know best how to arrange their working environment. As leaders, we've got to make sure they have the time and tools to do it, and of course monitor progress.”

So Fortaco developed a smartphone app where the production cell leaders make a 'before' photo and add a short description of the change to be made. After the improvement, a second photo is made that documents the change. The app also provides statistics about progress made by individuals to help them achieve annual targets.

The result has been that everyone can see who made 20 improvements and who made three. "The app has helped us to form habits and make real improvements,” says Wrona. “If you have 25 improvements per year with 10 line managers, that's 250 improvements in the Kurikka factory." And not only Kurikka. The app has proved so useful that it's being rolled out across other Fortaco factories. 

Where data will take us

Currently, Fortaco is using data to make its production more predictable, which translates directly to better quality and reliability. Its dedicated digitalization team of five, part of the operational excellence group, is committed to make a digital shadow of manufacturing for better, fact-based management, and eventually use intelligent analytics tools to further improve performance.

In the future, Wrona envisions full traceability with a quality check embedded in a system based on real-time data. Fortaco products will carry unique QR codes, the code redirecting the user to a web-based system where relevant information is present. “We’ll have raw material and components certificates, and operator traceability,” says Wrona, “and information about quality inspection, and test results.”

There'll be assistance for production, as well. Operators will be guided with instructions for operational sequence and production stage information. Quality testing instructions will be there, too, the results of which may be inserted directly into the same system as a form of data (no pen and paper required).

Given the pace of technology's development, long-term benefits are harder to predict. In the not-too-distant future, Wrona is excited about data that today appears disconnected, data the human brain can't process. “There are already tools available that can analyze data we collect in multiple configurations and return results a human being could never see,” he says. “It’s all about the amount of data and processing capacity. But the technology is already there.”

In all cases, the embrace of digital will mean that Fortaco will be a dominant player in the off-highway industry. "If you don't go digital you'll be out of the game," he says. "Nokia didn't believe in smart phones. Kodak didn't believe in digital photography. Fortaco is a premium supplier and we've got to make sure we offer a lot more than steel and a hammer."

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by Fortaco Group

How Long Until a Totally-electric Off-highway World?

While the industry’s attention often seems focused on fossil-free steel as a solution to climate change, a growing number of innovative companies – both established and startups – are solving the other, bigger problem: the generation of CO2 over heavy equipment’s lifetime.

No one disagrees that fossil-free steel is a good idea. It’s even a great idea. Governments and industry alike are rallying around the cause, and there are two separate initiatives alone in Europe to produce steel without CO2 emissions.

Fortaco, as well, is part of these initiatives. Attacking the problem in its infancy is an important project, but what’s often forgotten in our excitement about green steel is that the problem has a dimension of much bigger magnitude, and that big problems require big solutions that address the problem from a variety of angles.

In 2021, Carbon Brief, the UK-based website covering climate science, mapped 553 steel plants and found them responsible for nine percent of global CO2 emissions. While creating green steel is of critical importance, in the grand scheme of things the vehicles that use that steel over their lifetimes will generate far more CO2 than the production of the steel itself.

The transport sector alone generates 22.3 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, not to mention the off-highway sector, the massive machines that build the infrastructure that enable the transport sector to exist. “As a society, we’re actively attacking the problem in the cradle when it comes to CO2 emissions,” says Dr. Rafał Sornek, SVP Technology and Zero Emission Solutions at Fortaco, “when a much larger problem comes from a lifetime of carbon generated by the equipment that steel goes into. What many don’t know is that that problem is also actively being addressed, and the industry is a lot further along with a solution than many are aware.”

Electric experiments

How close are we to totally eliminating CO2 emissions in off-highway? No one has a definitive answer, but there are lots of companies asking the right questions.

Artisan Vehicle Systems is a California startup which caught the eye of the industry by demonstrating electric possibilities in underground mining early on with this 2016 video. AVS, which was acquired by Sandvik in 2019, enables zero underground emissions, produces less noise and heat, and does not require the addition of large infrastructure or power systems for a mine. Theoretically, provided it can be applied at the scale required, it enables massive savings on ventilation costs, the biggest source of power costs for underground mines.

Through its Electric Site Research Project, Volvo Construction Equipment and Skanska have imagined how a fossil-free worksite might look and built the world's first emission-free quarry. Their objective to electrify every transport stage in a quarry: excavation, primary-, and secondary crushing. Tests, they claim, show a 98-percent reduction in carbon emissions, 70 percent reduction in energy costs, and 40 percent lower operator costs — which gives them the confidence to predict a total 25 percent reduction in total cost of operations.

If AVS imagined an electric mine, and Volvo built a complete utopian vision, where are we now and how far is the industry at large from adopting it? One glimpse at the current reality may be seen at the cargo handling solutions company, Kalmar.

Kalmar leads the way

"Electric machines are not new," explains Per-Erik Johansson, Technology Manager Electrification at Kalmar. "We've had forklifts with up to nine tons of lifting capacity since the 1980s. From 2010 to 2015, we also developed forklifts with a lifting capacity of up to 18 tons. Lead acid technology was used, and we increased the system voltage to 120 volts to manage the higher power need. We didn't go to high voltage because the components and systems weren't available. In those days, there was still little focus on zero emissions and the CO2 footprint, but we knew that would come. By the end of 2010s, technologies had developed that permitted the needed power and fast charging of big machines, and so we began researching them. It's amazing how fast things can change."

Kalmar is a part of Cargotec and supplies cargo handling solutions and services to ports, terminals, distribution centers, industrial and heavy industry. With around two billion euros in sales worldwide, the company offers one of the most accurate reflection of the market reality for electric machines. Johansson says almost half of the small- or medium-sized machines Kalmar sells are electric, the rest diesel. "Our bigger machine market share is in starting phase. Orders are in, and pilot customers are eager to get started. We see huge potential — and the slow takeover from diesel."

Johansson says big questions for customers are total productivity and total cost of ownership (TCO). When it makes financial sense, it's then just a matter of growing your mindset. "In the beginning, I myself was skeptical of an electric reach stacker weighing 150 tons. But when you start thinking about it and drill down into what needs to be in place, you realize that it's possible for container handling, too." The barriers are simply disappearing. "Five years ago, we had maybe 10 to 15 percent of customers who believed in electric. Today, 80 or 90 percent say they'll go electric."

Changing mindsets

Those mindsets are changing across the entire supply chain, too.

Johansson cites batteries as an example of how fast things change. "Three or four years ago we were engaged in picking a battery supplier that would be the best for our applications. Now, three years later, there's a new battery technology that almost doubles the energy content and performance, all at half the price. It used to be hard to find a supplier. Now they're standing in line."

Customers are another force driving the change, he says. Diesel customers, who once dominated the business, are thinking differently now. "Diesel customers used to be only capex oriented. They looked at the purchase price of the machine. They didn’t see opex part of the picture because diesel was a cheap fuel. But now, when we see diesel and gas prices climbing, it highlights the biggest difference in TCO: the price of diesel versus electricity.”

Regulatory and taxation are a third force in the mix. The European Commission’s proposal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030 is an influencer. And taxation at least equally so. “To be able to reach this target we need to replace the dirty diesel vehicles now, or actually yesterday,” Johansson says, “since the lifetime of a machine is roughly 20 years.”

Johansson says the industry foresees future taxation on CO2, which means diesel. “Also,” he adds, “electricity is at least twice as efficient as diesel, if you look at the entire chain from energy content in diesel to movement of machine compared to the energy you need to put in electric.”

Buy since sometimes electricity is simply not available, Johansson points out that a fossil-free diesel substitute is an option. Kalmar's HVO100 (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil), for example, can reduce CO2 emissions in off-highway equipment by up to 90 percent.

Diesel won’t die

For the foreseeable future, diesel will continue to make sense for many applications, especially those in the off-highway segments where the job sites are far, far off-highway. But diesel does not have to be your grandfather's diesel, either, as proved by a startup in Austria called Xelectrix Power.

Recognizing that many applications run diesel generators at inefficient load curves or have high start-up peaks, Xelectrix uses peak shaving to allow a generator to operate in optimal range, reducing fuel consumption by 40 percent and maintenance costs by half. Xelectrix adds a parallel platform technology, attaching a power box to supplement the generator. They offer four ranges of boxes, the largest in a 20-foot container with maximum 150 kW/320-480 kWh.

“When we hybridize a diesel generator, we plug ourselves into it, telling it to work harder,” says Shaun Montgomery, Xelectrix's Chief Sales Officer. “A generator running at 90 percent capacity is more efficient than one running at 40 percent. You need less fuel to produce a kilowatt-hour when a generator has a load factor of between 85 to 95 percent. So you take a load, store the excess power in the batteries, and switch off the generator when the batteries are full. Run it efficiently or not at all.”

Xelectrix has created battery storage with power electronics, with a bi-directional hybrid frequency inverter at the heart, capable of pushing and pulling power, converting AC to DC and back again. "It has a grid-forming ability," says Montgomery. "When the grid fails, we create one, and photovoltaic, say, continues to work. PV looks after the load, and when more is produced than needed, it goes to the batteries."

Xelectrix has created a massive, fuel-efficient, power pack that can power major job sites in both on- and off-grid situations.

Montgomery likens current times to undergoing another industrial revolution. "We've used diesel generators for well over one hundred years, and the energy crisis is forcing people to think about volts, kilowatts, and kilowatt hours. The mentality switch is happening extremely fast. On the construction side, if you're not knowledgeable about how the regulations for building in cities are changing, if you don't understand CO2 offset taxes, well you better get up to speed."

Lighter materials

As technologies like Xelectrix’s enable industry to move closer to a zero-emissions mode, never has the weight of those vehicles been more important.

“Every kilogram of steel you save creates leverage in terms of reduction in the size of the battery,” says Fortaco’s Rafał Sornek. “Batteries are a significant part of capex, even when you consider falling prices.”

Sornek says many of Fortaco customers are asking for help in redesigning streel structures and cabins in the new electric versions of their machinery. “Once you begin the work of redesign, weight reduction is a natural part of it.” But he cautions that Tier 0.5 and Tier 1 suppliers should not wait on OEMs to supply the answers.

“The transition to zero emission solutions requires coordinated effort by all the players in the off-highway industry. But it requires also change in mindset of Tier 0.5 and Tier 1 suppliers who need to be involved in developing technologies and solutions much more intensively than in more stable times.”

Changing mindsets

To assist in the battle to win hearts and minds for electric solutions, Fortaco has formed a unit called Technology and Zero Emission Solutions, which Sornek now heads. “It’s a unit dedicated to supporting our customers on their journey to zero-emissions solutions,” he says.

On the technology side, the unit is charged with taking care of organic growth, including research on fossil-free steel applications and novel HVAC systems suited for electric vehicles. But it will also actively scan the market for partnerships and M&A opportunities in areas that can support Fortaco customers with zero-emissions objectives. “For any of our customers who on a journey to zero-emissions solutions,” says Sornek, “it’s our unit who can help take them there.”

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by Fortaco Group