The Depuy Synthes facility in Ringaskiddy, Co Cork, which produces replacement hip and knee joints, achieved the ranking for using the technology to make old machines talk to one another. The result has been a 10 per cent reduction in operating costs, and a 5 per cent drop in machine downtime. The plant is one of nine named by the World Economic Forum (WEF) as the leading factories globally for embedding new technologies such as IoT into modern production. The facilities were selected from an initial list of more than 1,000 manufacturing companies based on their successful implementation of so-called “fourth industrial revolution” technologies. “By implementing simple internet-of-things devices across a range of machines that were never intended to ‘talk’ to each other, the Depuy Synthes factory created real-time digital twins of its factory equipment to monitor performance,” he added.

Source: The Irish Times September 05, 2018 04:18 UTC