Notice: HERA Industry 4.0 assessment for steel fabricators now available!

HERA is pleased to advise that we are now able to offer industry 4.0 assessments to steel fabricators – including SIRI, automation of welded fabrication and bottleneck analysis.

Developed in collaboration with the University of Wollongong, our Industry 4.0 assessment is aimed at understanding where a business sit in terms of adoption of Industry 4.0. It achieves this by getting an accurate picture of the company’s current state in order to develop an innovation roadmap.

The assessment covers the whole company and is based on principles of SIRI (smart industry readiness index), with a particular focus is on the automation of welded fabrication.

How does it all work?

The SIRI scheme assesses a company in 16 dimensions for its development in Industry 4.0 terms. Each dimension is scored from 0 to 5.

A rating of 0 in a particular dimension is the lowest score and representative of a company not having started their industry 4 journey, at the other end of the scale, a score of 5 indicates a company has achieved the highest level of industry 4 implementation. The aim of the assessment is not to achieve as high a ranking as possible, but accurately benchmark their current state for future improvements. This current state is one of the factors used to develop the innovation roadmap for the company. The other factors feeding into this are the current cost structure and a company’s future ambitions via Key Performance Indicators.

Bottleneck analysis is used to identify steps in the fabrication process that have the greatest impact on the overall performance of a company. Based on the importance and particularity of the welding process in the fabrication chain, the assessment will also keep an eye out for opportunities to automate welding and welding related processes.

In this scheme, the assessor serves as a guide through the process and provides an independent and unbiased opinion.

The results are presented in form of an innovation roadmap for the company, where areas of industry 4.0 investment are identified, bottlenecks in the fabrication workflow are identified, and opportunities for automation highlighted.

What are the assessment steps?

Pre-Assessment

• Initiate contact with HERA
• Company nominates an internal project leader and assembles a team of subject matter experts
• Company carries out self-assessment

Assessment session (1/2 to 1 day)

• Overview of Industry 4.0
• Industry 4.0 Readiness Assessment cross the whole company
• Selection of strategic objectives
• Time frame for innovation

Reporting/Post audit

• Assessment report – innovation roadmap
• Primary areas of innovation

Outcome

• Assessment report – innovation roadmap
• Identification of bottleneck
• Options for automation of welding and related processes

Keen to know your Industry 4.0 state of play?

We are currently offering sponsored assessments for the first seven HERA members to get in touch with us. In return for this great opportunity we’d simply ask your permission to share the outcomes as case studies in a generic form.

If you are interested to know more, please get in touch with our Automation and Welding 4.0 Engineer, Holger Heinzel.