News

Digital transformation in practice

A demonstration centre to show how digitised work processes or digital transformation solutions work in practice has been set up at the headquarters of our company Stroka produkt in Radlje. It allows visitors to learn about the use of digitised customer orders, work orders, real-time monitoring and analysis of data on machine availability, utilisation, maintenance, etc.

Development strategy and digital transformation path

In 2015, we took the strategic decision to extend our range of services to the digital transformation of businesses, focusing on the development of cloud services (AZURE: Big Data, predictive analytics and maintenance), the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (including machine learning), mixed reality and blockchain. More recently, we have also been focusing on the convergence of knowledge and technologies (Low-code to No-code).

To give our existing and potential customers a closer look at these solutions, we have opened a demonstration centre to showcase our digital transformation solutions in practice. Customers get a first-hand insight into production issues and learn about the challenges faced by manufacturing companies. The construction of the demo centre is a continuation of the activities and development of the IQ TPM 4.0 project, which was co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

What can you learn in the Digital Transformation Demo Centre?

When you enter digital printing, you can see a plan information board that brings together all the important information about the order that your employees need to do their job – who the client is, what needs to be done, when the order needs to be completed by, which machines will need to be used for printing, which materials will be used, who the project manager is, who will do the preparation, who will do the printing, who will do the finishing, where the print data is, and whether on-site assembly is required.

A web application runs in the background, where the employee in charge enters the data. Digital print professionals can change the status of their projects or tasks and report hours spent. When everyone involved has completed their tasks and submitted their hours, the administrative employee receives an alert that the product is ready for the client.

Monitoring machine performance and environmental quality in production

We use a variety of machines to work in Digital Printing. On three of them, current clamps (power flow sensors) are mounted on the electrical conductors to monitor and display changes in operation and measure the active use of the machines through current consumption. The data collected by monitoring also helps us to diagnose faults during maintenance. In addition, we can assess the health of the machine and its surroundings based on data stored in the Microsoft Azure data warehouse over the long term.

For successful monitoring, it is also important to know under what circumstances the machine was operating when the problem occurred. Along with information about the machine's operating status, information is also stored about the environmental conditions in which the machine was operating - temperature, humidity, sound intensity, luminosity. With ambient sensors, we can monitor the quality of the production environment, which is very important for the well-being of employees, their health and safety at work in the long term. The right conditions in the workspace also have an impact on print quality and service performance.

Machine monitoring ensures the smooth running of the production process, including notifications to the machine operator if deviations from the appropriate operating conditions are detected, such as when temperature and humidity values move outside the prescribed limits. This allows the operator to act ahead of time, ensure proper operation and reduce the possibility of errors affecting product quality. This reduces the potential for waste, which translates into inefficient use of labour and material.

Mixed reality for remote support

In the demo centre, you can see a demonstration of remote support using Microsoft HoloLens and how it works in practice. Remote support is particularly useful for mentoring and maintenance. With the glasses, experienced staff can remotely guide junior colleagues through work processes and teach them new skills.

It is also an excellent method for successfully introducing new employees to the workplace. When the employee is in the field or in a remote location with adequate internet connectivity, they can help solve machine problems remotely. The benefits of this approach are faster problem resolution, less downtime in production, financial savings in travel costs, reduced overload of service staff and easier and faster learning.

Demo centre in the future

In the future, we plan to use artificial intelligence and predictive maintenance in our centre. The latter will be possible once enough data has been collected to be able to make predictions. Typically, this requires at least one year of data collection, and at least two or three years for machine learning.

These projections are based on the article written by Sabina Petrov, editor of the Tovarna leta project and published on the same portal.