One of the most pressing challenges currently facing the manufacturing industry is the shortage of specialised technical skills on the factory floor. It was in response to this very real challenge that Scm Group developed an innovation dedicated to mechanical surface finishing processes, which received an award on 4th November at the 20th edition of SMAU in Milan.
The innovation consists of an artificial intelligence-based process configurator integrated into its DMC machines for sanding wood and metal. It transforms a decades-long archive of data and scientific tests into a fully-fledged digital assistant, designed to guide both SCM sales teams in machine configuration and industry operators in selecting the right processing parameters.
Operations such as sanding, calibration and deburring require the precise combination of numerous variables, including working speed, pressure, type of material and abrasive loads. SCM has built on the know-how developed since 1956 for its DMC range of machines, incorporating scientific measurements carried out in its own laboratories. A substantial body of qualitative and quantitative data has thus been encoded into proprietary algorithms that outperform generic language models.
The result is a process configurator that integrates directly into the human-machine interface (HMI) of the workstation, providing specialised responses based on SCM's real-world experience and tailored to the customer's specific application requirements.
The application is designed as a dynamic system that is constantly evolving: every new application tested by SCM in real-world conditions will progressively enrich its knowledge base, enabling the company to expand and refine the range of solutions available to support its customers.
“Adopting this configurator brings operational and economic benefits across the entire value chain,” explains Alessandro Caramia, Product Manager & Business Developer at SCM. “The configurator is designed to reduce setup times and make it easier to set processing parameters, with estimated time savings of up to 20% in the applications considered.
“Within the company, the tool also guides the sales team in configuring systems optimally during the quotation stage, providing accurate estimates of processing times, costs and productivity, while offering SCM opportunities to develop future software update services.”
The SMAU Innovation Award was collected by Bruno Di Napoli, Business Unit Manager of SCM's surface treatment solutions, and Sara Iaconianni, Scm Group's Scouting, Idea Management & Idea Generation Manager.
