Cebi, which produces electromechanical products for the automotive and household appliance industries, has over 3,000 employees and manufacturing sites across the world. Succeeding with its industry 4.0 digital transformation is a must.
We need digital tools to be able to manage this complexity and adapt to the needs of our customers.
“During the past 10-20 years, the complexity of our company and of the industry that we serve has increased considerably,” explains Guillaume Policarpo, Industry 4.0 Programme Manager at Cebi. “We have more employees, more machines, more processes and more product references, and our production has become much more versatile. We need digital tools to be able to manage this complexity and adapt to the needs of our customers.”
Towards industry 4.0
Cebi started its industry 4.0 project in 2018 with the aim of increasing its overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). Large amounts of data linked to its production processes are collected in real time in order to derive insights and recommendations with the help of artificial intelligence and analytics tools. The company is building skills, technologies, applications and solutions at the Luxembourg plant, which will then be replicated across its locations worldwide. “We have come around 70% of the way,” Mr Policarpo comments. “Today, we have a big data lake hosted on our centralised infrastructure and are developing a data analytics platform that provides dedicated dashboards for the operational teams.”
Strong partnerships for digital transformation
The analytics platform is created in cooperation with DataThings, a Luxembourg start-up specialised in developing intelligent software systems aimed at transforming data into actionable insights. Another key partner is the University of Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) that helped Cebi define how to collect data and deploy the digital infrastructure in an optimal way. Other important focus areas for collaboration with the SnT include cybersecurity and machine learning.
Luxinnovation, the national innovation agency, supported us with setting up the joint R&D project with SnT and DataThings.
“Luxinnovation, the national innovation agency, supported us with setting up the joint industry 4.0 R&D project with SnT and DataThings, and we received an R&D subsidy from the Ministry of the Economy,” Mr Policarpo points out. Openness to partners is central for the company, which recently made its state-of-the-art testing laboratory accessible to external users. “Our equipment is being used more efficiently, and we get an opportunity to learn from other companies. It is a win-win situation.”
Photo: © Luxinnovation/Laurent Antonelli