The Industry 4.0 Italian market in 2019 reached 3.9 billion euros, with a growth of 22% compared to the previous year and a threefold increase in the past four.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is underway in our country and in 2020 the pandemic has further highlighted the benefits that investments in the Industry 4.0 and in the digitization of processes can generate: most of the projects (2.3 billion euros, 60%) focus on connectivity and data acquisition (Industrial IoT) initiatives, followed by Analytics (630 million), Cloud Manufacturing (325 million), Advanced Automation (190 million), Additive Manufacturing (85 million) and advanced human-machine interface technologies (55 million).
A very interesting case of application of these technologies is represented by the Cornaglia Group Spa, a centenary company operating in the production of automotive components. Founded in 1916, Officine Metallurgiche Cornaglia Spa today produces systems in sheet metal (intake and exhaust), in plastic (water and fuel tanks) and mixed (filters).
The starting challenge was the management of maintenance tickets within the Plastic Components Division, a fundamental activity to guarantee the maximum efficiency of the plant: the process, not being digitized, had some inefficiencies both in the compilation times of the tickets and in the quality of the information collected, as well as in the dissemination of information and in the monitoring and analysis of performance indicators.
Keethings has provided a solution that helps operational staff in managing daily activities: guiding it in the activities to be carried out, providing a summary of what has been completed, supporting it with reminders and alerts in the event of critical situations and making all the company’s knowledge base available to it.
The “Smarty” Virtual Assistant is the interface to the world of the shopfloor, the magnifying glass to see what is happening inside the factory, filtering the information that is actually useful.
Thanks to Keethings, after only 3 months from the start of the project, all Cornaglia maintenance technicians now use the new ticket management module which has made it possible to speed up and simplify the collection and management of strategic and operational information, allowing for the reduction of tickets management times, the continuous monitoring of activities and the immediate identification of possible criticalities.
For the realization of this project, Keethings used cutting-edge technologies such as the ” Speech to text” which allows operators to use their voice to fill out tickets in a faster and more complete way. The simplicity of the interface, combined with the use from mobile devices, has made the adoption of the Keethings platform extremely rapid. The use of a cloud architecture has further sped up the deployment times of the solution.
The solution is currently installed in the Cornaglia plant in Villarbasse and thanks to the excellent results obtained it will soon be extended to the other plants of the group.
Alberto Vassallo , manager of the maintenance department of the Villarbasse plant, declares: “I am particularly satisfied with the project both in terms of the speed of implementation and the ease of use of the solution, which has made it possible to minimize the adoption times by the team and to significantly improve the efficiency of our department “.
Raffaele Gargiulo , CEO and Cofounder of Keethings, concludes: “We are proud to have contributed with our technology to accelerate Cornaglia’s digitization process, guaranteeing the full realization of the expected benefits: the simplification of processes and improvement of collaboration between departments, the monitoring of more accurate performance and the reduction of problem resolution times “.
