Milestones along the way to the Factory of the Future

Manufacturing is rushing headlong toward a rendezvous with the Factory of the Future and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), both of which most times seem so very far off to most.

It’s good to know that we are closer than we think; especially when companies like FANUC and Cisco can combine their tech to give us a taste of the future in the here and now.

Zero Downtime or ZDT is one such milestone along the way to IIoT. Zero Downtime means exactly what it says: factory operations never have to stop to take valuable time to repair a machine or replace a component because ZDT can spot an imminent failure and resolve it before shutdown of the entire manufacturing line.

“This is definitely a game changer,” says Andy Denny, VP of Robot Operations FANUC America. “Think of that. A facility that predicts when equipment is going to fail before it fails,” he says succinctly.

“Rowan Trollope, Cisco’s senior vice president for the Internet of Things and Applications, describes the collaboration as “an historic shift in the industry, with IoT, industrial automation and machine learning coming together to make the factory of the future a reality. It’s been talked about for years, but now it is really happening.”

Savings to manufacturers have clocked in at about $70 million so far, with no end in sight, says FANUC’s Joe Gazzarato, Director of Engineering, who presides over ZDT operations.

Robotics Business Review sat down with Joe to lift the covers on ZDT to take a look at its impact for both FANUC and its customers.