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| Lina María Alvarado, PhD student in Engineering with Emphasis in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Credit: Édgar Bejarano, Communications Office, Faculty of Engineering. |
Although there are many guidelines and technologies with which companies can improve their performance and energy security, such as the ISO 50001 standard and Smart Manufacturing technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), there is still a significant lag when applying them in particular cases, depending on the characteristics and objectives of each of these companies. Research proposes a review of the different tools available to provide industrial companies with criteria to be better informed when making decisions related to electricity demand.
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Smart Manufacturing and its use in the area of electrical energy
The importance of the efficient use of electrical energy derived from internal processes in companies at industrial level has given way to a series of tools and guidelines with the purpose of contributing to a better performance in this matter. Some of them come from ordinances and recommendations at state and reference level on energy issues, such as the ISO 50001 standard, and others are the result of technological advances which are currently being experienced in the world, such as the irruption of IoT, Industry 4.0 or "Smart Manufacturing". However, the availability of these sources of information does not, in itself, translate into correct practices for all the companies that require them, because there is no reference framework to help determine which of these recommendations and tools fit their needs, as well as how to use them in each case.
Aware of the demands in this area, thanks to her experience of more than 20 years in projects oriented to automation and improvement of production processes within the industrial sector, the electronic engineer Lina María Alvarado proposed to take conceptual references and tools of "Smart Manufacturing" and analyze the usefulness of its integration in the area of electrical energy, applied to real life cases. Her research, which is part of the PhD in Engineering with Emphasis in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, is directed by professor and researcher Eduardo Caicedo Bravo and co-directed by professor and researcher Wilfredo Alfonso Morales, and seeks to propose a frame of reference, as well as a planning and implementation method, so that companies that require it can benefit from its findings and put them into practice in their processes.
"Smart Manufacturing" is like a broad umbrella, encompassing technologies and disciplines that support smart production," explains researcher Lina María Alvarado, adding that within this concept are devices and tools that are born from the joint work between the physical and digital worlds, such as Industry 4.0 and 5.0, IoT and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). These tools seek to increase the efficiency of production processes, to make them faster, more flexible and tailored to the needs of users, as well as more efficient in terms of the use of energy and raw materials involved in such processes.
For the researcher, the use of this type of tool has begun to be seen at a national level, giving rise to connections that seek to demonstrate their benefits. "There are local companies that have developed devices that capture information and, through IoT and its protocols, take it to cloud services to try to make the consumer understand its functions". However, this is not the case for all companies, since in many of these cases they are companies with strong financial muscle and established engineering teams that can access consulting processes, an advantage that smaller companies do not have, which could also benefit from the reduction in energy consumption that would mean using the tools of "Smart Manufacturing", to the extent that it can contribute to their competitiveness and sustainability.
The contribution of this doctoral research is to make it possible for any company, regardless of its economic or operational resources, to have detailed information at hand to understand the benefits of these technologies.
The research: "Smart Manufacturing" model and method of planning and implementation according to the maturity level of enterprises
In order to carry out the state of the art, the researcher Lina María Alvarado used her experience in the productive sector to enrich the results obtained with the findings of research carried out by the academia. In addition to articles in specialized journals, the researcher considered sectoral reports from entities that are referents in energy issues such as the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the International Energy Agency (IEA), local institutes such as the Ministry of Mines and Energy, the National Energy Plan, and public policy entities such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Economic Forum.
One of the objectives of the research is, henceforth, to create a map that would serve as a graphic representation of all the tools available, so that companies can use them according to their needs. "There are many digital tools available, but my proposal focuses on relying on "Smart Manufacturing" and data-driven decision making," explains researcher Alvarado, adding that one of the advantages of this tool is that it allows, in turn, the use of artificial intelligence, Machine Learning and information modeling, to better understand the behavior of the data obtained.
For this, the researcher conducted a mapping that sought to determine the scope of the tools of "Smart Manufacturing", because there are traditional tools for energy management whose procedures require a lot of time, such as ISO 50001, focused on procedures and processes, operational management, documentation and records that in some cases can become manual. This tool is useful for medium- and long-term decision making. On the contrary, with the use of the tools included in "Smart Manufacturing" the times are much shorter. "Decisions are much closer to real time; the cycles of action, analysis and response can take place in a matter of minutes. What is automated is at different levels," says the researcher.
Her work consisted of considering the available tools and establishing them on a map, composed of hierarchical levels in the organizations, and whose location also depended on whether the decisions to be made were close to real time or whether they were medium and long term decisions, as well as whether they required the level of connectivity in the organizations to be integrated or whether they could be presented in isolation.
Another contribution of the information search carried out by researcher Alvarado had to do with the compilation of Smart Manufacturing maturity models to evaluate companies to identify their capacity to appropriate these tools. "We want to identify a way to evaluate how ready companies are to use these Industry 4.0 technologies in their plants or in their processes, appropriate to the Colombian context", says the researcher.
This need arose from the complexity of the tools involved in the preliminary map, since they require installation and configuration processes, appropriate storage methods for the data generated and the correlation that may exist between them. "It's not like "plug and play" but "plug and pray" says the researcher, to exemplify the difficulty of carrying out these processes without knowing their characteristics in depth.
"People and organizations need to understand their processes, and the idea is that these tools will help them. This is the planning and implementation method. Because, for a digital transformation process to be successful, you first must transform people's vision, transform the understanding of processes and align the use of technology with organizational objectives. Otherwise, it doesn't work. This is why there are so many failed technological processes within companies, and why companies are often reluctant to invest. Because it is not clear to them how they are going to return the investment, and the reason why it is not clear to them is because they have not finished understanding how these tools are going to help them," says researcher Lina María Alvarado.
Preliminary results and impact on the region
The research is in an evaluation phase, which allows evidencing the draft of a preliminary tool map to guide the use of tools. Regarding the maturity model focused on companies, the researcher Lina María Alvarado is working on generating the necessary links, since she aspires to carry out this research with real processes and information from the productive sector instead of digital simulations, which has implied a challenge in terms of time. Once the tool map and the maturity model are complete, the information and methodology will be validated with a case study.
In the future, researcher Alvarado hopes that this type of methodology can have a positive impact on the productive sector: "It is hoped that it can help companies make better decisions. They will have more criteria to choose what works for them and how to make better decisions related to their energy expenditure", she concludes.
If interested in being in touch with the PhD's student or any further information about the investigation, please write the Faculty of Engineering Communications Office: comunicaingenieria@correounivalle.edu.co.
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