Podcast: How Industry 4.0 is changing the game for manufacturing

Craig Sutton

Craig Sutton is the vice president for Industry 4.0 at Eaton. He drives the development and adoption of industry leading technologies to drive value and competitive advantage for Eaton's global manufacturing footprint.

Prior to Eaton, he worked for over 23 years at Deere and Company with roles ranging from customer support and quality engineering to product engineering, product validation and manufacturing engineering. He has a passion for new manufacturing technologies, such as additive manufacturing, robotics, lightweight materials, digital manufacturing, Industrial 5G and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). He serves on the Quad City Manufacturing Lab board, the Western Illinois University College of Engineering advisory board, the Illinois Manufacturing Excellence Corp (IMEC) board, the Iowa Innovation Council and MxD Institute’s tech advisory council. 

Craig received his bachelor’s degree in agriculture engineering from the University of Illinois, an executive MBA from the Tippie School of Business at the University of Iowa and a Strategic Innovation Leadership certificate from Northwestern Kellogg School of Management.  

Todd Earls

Todd Earls is vice president, Information Technology, Digital Design & Manufacturing at Eaton. In this role, Todd is responsible for leading a team of practice managers, architects and functional analysts in support of enterprise engineering and operations functions globally.  This includes over 20K engineering users and 300 plants across Eaton.

Prior to his current role, Todd was an IT Business Relationship Manager in Eaton's Aerospace business and an IT manager responsible for the global deployment of PLM systems. Outside of Eaton and in between Eaton roles, Todd held several positions of increasing responsibility at Stryker Corporation, including his last role as a Sr. IT Business Partner responsible for all IT strategies for one of their largest divisions and their global PLM program.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Michigan and a Masters of Business Administration from Michigan State University. 

SPEAKER: Welcome to Eaton's 10 in 10 Podcast, where we focus on industry trends shaping the future of power management. In this series, our expert answers 10 questions about one of today's most talked about industry topics in 10 minutes or less. From the energy transition to digital transformation and beyond, we explore trends and discuss strategies for delivering safer, more efficient, and reliable power. 

CARA CLAIRE: Hi, I'm Cara Claire, senior manager for Vehicle Group Communications here with another Eaton 10 in 10 podcast. Factory of the future modernization, inspired by Industry 4.0 digital connectivity and data analytics can offer manufacturers new ways of streamlining efficient production, meeting safety and sustainability goals, and decreasing downtime and cost.

Today, we're talking with Craig Sutton, vice president of Industry 4.0, and Todd Earls, vice president of IT, Digital Design, and Manufacturing, about how companies can use data to make their factories more productive and drive growth. We've got 10 questions lined up and 10 minutes to answer them. Craig, Todd, thanks for joining us. Let's get started. The first question is for Craig. Craig, how do you define Industry 4.0?

CRAIG SUTTON:Yeah, so thanks, Cara, for having us on here. I think, whenever I start talking about Industry 4.0, I like to maybe shift back and just foundational set on Industry 3.0, because that's the set of technologies that we saw come about in the '70s and '80s, where we started to see the advent of more computers and even some introduction of robotics and automation.

But if you look at those, they were standalone technologies that were there to complete a task maybe better. Now, as we move forward into what Industry 4.0 talks about, this is the concept of machines working with machines and connectivity of machines and things of interconnected data. We're collecting data. We're using data analytics and even moving ourselves into the space of artificial intelligence and bringing in other technologies such as 3D printing.

CARA CLAIRE: Thanks, Craig. Now that we've learned a little bit more about what Industry 4.0 is, can you explain why companies should invest in Industry 4.0? What are some benefits? 

CRAIG SUTTON:We see that those technologies are being applied inside our operations in a way that we start seeing improvements in operational efficiencies and performance improvements using data insights, ways to drive productivity, or flexibility, or even speed to market.

It's not going to be a secret that only Eaton has a handle on. All manufacturers are out there. We're all in a competitive space. And we all need to be able to prove how we're trying to drive efficiencies and value realization. And this kind of brings forward how Industry 4.0 is going to really drive a lot of those benefits into our financials and our performance metrics. 

CARA CLAIRE: Todd, I'd like your thoughts on the next question. Can you talk to us about what technologies are included as part of Industry 4.0 initiatives?

TODD EARLS: Yeah, absolutely, Cara. So there's some really exciting technologies that are out there. Craig mentioned a few of these earlier, so Internet of Things, or IoT, artificial intelligence, machine learning, virtual reality, augmented reality, machine connectivity, 3D printers, cobots. There's a whole wide variety of technologies that are now possible via the computing power that's out there in the world today and just advancements in technology in general that we can utilize in Industry 4.0.

CARA CLAIRE: As a follow-up question for you, Todd, what are the first steps a manufacturer should take when planning for digitalization of their manufacturing processes?

TODD EARLS: Yeah, we really want to start with what problems are they having? What are they trying to improve? Is it on-time delivery? Is it quality? Is it cost? Is it something else within their plant that they're having an issue with?

And then based on that, we can understand whether there's a technology, a people, or a process solution to each of those problems that they have. And then if it is a technology case, where we can apply Industry 4.0 technologies to it, it's all based on connectivity.

And so that connectivity really could be sensors. It could be our own smart products that we have within Eaton, other sources of data. But really trying to find the waste in our operations in order to be able to really analyze that and solve problems using that technology is where we want to begin. 

CARA CLAIRE: Back over to you, Craig. With the right data in hand, how can manufacturers improve their bottom line?

CRAIG SUTTON:I think one of the things that we like to look at is, how are other companies kind of been performing in this way of using this interconnected data? So one of the areas that we like to look at is some reports that have been published.

And McKinsey came out with one recently that they surveyed about 40 plus manufacturers who said, hey, now that you're using connected data, what has been the benefit to the bottom line that you've used? And what they started pointing to was incredible increases in the area of productivity. For example, things like factory output and productivity increases were consistently changing and improving somewhere between 20% up to almost 100% improvement in what they were measuring it against today.

The other one was around agility. Agility is what they were talking about with inventory lead times and the way to reduce inventory or change over time. So we could consistently see these numbers, once again, in that 50% to 60% improvement. So all of those numbers that we start talking about actually translate into clear, direct business impact to the bottom line when we're trying to run the most efficient operations possible. 

CARA CLAIRE: So, Craig, I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier, additive manufacturing. How is Eaton using additive manufacturing to improve productivity?

CRAIG SUTTON:Additive manufacturing, or also known many times, as 3D printing has just a tremendous value that comes forward. There's one that we started seeing early on. And it was just in the ability to drive speed, and flexibility, and prototyping of tools.

So you'd come up with an idea, maybe as a concept on the product side, maybe it's an idea inside your shop floor. You could model it, try it out very quickly. It didn't take long lead times and lots of investment. But what we really start seeing a lot of value inside of the company is when we're driving our tooling.

And so it's a great fit for additive manufacturing. So we've seen a lot of work in really just driving our focus on using additive as a technique for tooling. You can kind of think of it as an additive first approach that we're able to drive down those costs that go into our operations.

CARA CLAIRE: Thanks, Craig. Todd, companies will always have to adapt to social and economic change. And COVID-19 is just one example. How has connectivity helped organizations address change?

TODD EARLS: One of the things and biggest challenges that we had was that not a lot of people were allowed into our factories after the pandemic hit. And so we were able to use technologies, such as augmented reality and virtual reality, in order to do some things that we wouldn't normally have been able to do without this access to these plants.

This included some training that we would have done externally, virtual witness testing by our customers, Gemba Walks by internal and external people as well. So these were things that, normally, we would never have been able to do, but we were able to leverage technology in order to do that. So this is just one of those ways where COVID-19 could have set us back, but instead, we were ahead of the game in Eaton. 

CARA CLAIRE: Craig, let's talk about factory automation. What are some of the new technologies we're seeing in manufacturing?

CRAIG SUTTON:Yeah, so a couple of areas that we're pretty excited about that we're seeing the new technologies and is around cobots. So cobots is an area that really stands for collaborative robots. So in the past, we've seen robots kind of work behind cages and cells and really a disconnect between the human and the robot.

But what we're seeing is these are low payload type robot arms that are designed to work with the human in close proximity. And they can really drive efficiencies in ergonomics or just efficiencies in safety to loading and driving the productivity of the worker who is standing there with them doing work together.

The other area is around autonomous material movement. And we hear things called AGVs, Autonomous Guided Vehicles, and AMRs, Autonomous Mobile Robots. But what they really are the way to autonomously move material around in your factory to get it to the right point of use at the right time.

So you kind of think of it as a device that's looking for its path of least resistance through the factory. You load it up, it gets to its point, and we can drop it off. It drives a lot of safety and a lot of productivity in the movement of the material.

CARA CLAIRE: We know that with connectivity comes risk. So Todd, how can companies ensure their connected manufacturing facilities remain safe and secure?

TODD EARLS: Connectivity is really the central theme of Industry 4.0. And connectivity entails connecting in devices, such as sensors, and machines, and other things that contain software. And as we know, with any software, there comes vulnerabilities.

We know that if we have issues or security threats within those vulnerabilities on those devices that we're connecting in, it can impact our entire network at Eaton. So we put in safeguards, such as firewalls and other technologies in order to prevent that from happening.

But most importantly, during any Industry 4.0 projects or initiatives, we're making sure that everything is safe and clean before we even connect it in. So we take multiple steps in order to make sure that we have a secure environment within Eaton to prevent any external cybersecurity threats.

CARA CLAIRE: Finally, Craig, can you share some insight on what the factory of the future looks like?

CRAIG SUTTON:We're going to move from this factory that only has insights to really being intelligent. And you're going to move from a factory that has automation in it to being autonomous. So you kind of put all those concepts together that we've been talking about with connected devices.

And what we see going forward is just a really fully connected factory, where all of the lines will be self-adjusting. They're going to be self-learning. They're going to be very flexible. We're going to be very predictive in what's coming forward.

We're going to know the impact of volumes moving up or down And change in orders and things of that nature, which means the factory of the future actually grows beyond just those four walls of the factory. They really become a connected ecosystem with our warehouses, and our design teams, and even our supply base, where we are all able to use data together in harmony to move us in a very, very efficient and productive manner going forward. 

CARA CLAIRE: Craig, Todd, thank you so much for your time today. It's interesting to hear how Industry 4.0 is moving manufacturing forward. It's really exciting to see this transition take shape. If you'd like to learn more about how we're enabling factories of the future, visit us at eaton.com/industry4-0.