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Day 3: Engineering - Digital Manufacturing » More questions
Photo of Dan McHugh
Dan (host): Take a look at some more questions and answers relating to digital manufacturing below...
Question:
Is it possible for us to develop things for mixed reality?
student profile
Photo of Stuart Moss
Answer:
You can develop mixed reality most easily on iPads using swift coding.
Question:
How do we get to see one of these cool smart factories, can we get a school trip there?
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Photo of Stuart Moss
Answer:
Toyota in Derby offers school trips to their car assembly factory.
Question:
How are Rolls-Royce looking to make their jet engines more sustainable?
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Photo of Stuart Moss
Answer:
We are currently working on electric engines. You might have seen that we just set a world record for the fastest electrically powered vehicle.
Question:
What is industry 4.0?
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Photo of Andy Rowland
Answer:
Industry 4.0 refers to the 4th industrial revolution, the other three were the 1st industrial revolution (late 18th century - the use of steam power), 2nd industrial revolution (late 19th century – the use of electricity for production lines), 3rd industrial revolution (1970s – the use of computers for industrial control systems). Industry 4.0 introduces machine learning and AI to manufacturing. For example the AI might predict a machine is going to fail using sensor data (temperature, vibration etc.) and then ingest the instructions from PDFs, make recommendations to the operators on how to keep it going a while longer, whilst linking to other systems to automatically order the necessary parts, and schedule the engineer with the right skills to fix the machine, thereby avoiding any unscheduled downtime. 1 hour's down time could cost anything from £100,000 to £1 million!
Question:
What are the benefits of technology in industry?
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Photo of Andy Rowland
Answer:
The benefits of technology are varied. Examples include:
  1. Monitoring the end-to-end process to keep it safe, e.g. opening a valve automatically if pressure builds up.
  2. Scheduling work in the most efficient way, so that stock is held just in time.
  3. Running robots (or now cobots) to help human beings with tasks e.g. picking things in a large warehouse, helping people to collaborate or learn from one another using tablets and smart glasses – e.g. this red light is flashing, what do I do, should I worry?
  4. Controlling drones with high definition cameras for the remote inspection of dangerous things like wind farms – e.g. avoiding manual checks in the winter as sheets of ice can fall on people from the wind farm blades.
Question:
What other cool things are you working on at Rolls-Royce?
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Photo of Stuart Moss
Answer:
We are working on lots of cool technologies, including electric flight, nuclear power, space travel and even hybrid trains. Rolls-Royce really does have wide expertise in the most challenging of technology areas.
Question:
How do Rolls-Royce adapt their factories to new technology?
student profile
Photo of Steven Carter
Answer:
Great question! We are always exploring current, new or emerging technologies and assessing the maturity of these and suitability for deploying into our factories which also includes how they fit in with the overall Digital Manufacturing product life-cycle. New technologies are an exciting part of the job; assessing what they do, what we want them to do, if they're ready now (or in 1/2 years' time) and how they integrate with current technologies to make a real business difference! Adopting new technologies successfully is really important, we always review how they affect or need to change three areas:
  • People - do we need new skills or training?
  • Process - how does the technology impact what we do?
  • Tools - the actual technology itself and their integration needs with other solutions
Got a question? email computerscience@bt.com
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