The Connected Factory
You take the machines and sensors that report for themselves: what real-time data is worth, and what it costs to get it.
After this track you can
You can say what a real-time feed would change about a decision you make today, price the instrumentation honestly, and refuse the dashboard that reports a number nobody acts on.
6 courses · 11 h
- 24.1Real-Time Production Tracking: Who Records the Event, and What It Costs ThemPractitioner6 lessons · 1 h 50 minYou take one sweatshirt order and one line fitted with terminals. You see why the unit an event is recorded in can never be changed afterwards, and why capture is only expensive at the station that sets the speed. You find where the delay between an event and a decision really sits. You see why a factory that re-plans once a shift gains nothing from minute-level data. And what to do when tracking and payroll disagree.
- 24.2MES, IoT and Machine Data: the Gap Between a Signal and a FactPractitioner6 lessons · 1 h 50 minOne factory fits sensors to 412 machines, and you follow the numbers that come out. A sewing machine reports only a needle going up and down. Every piece count, efficiency, and downtime reason on the screen is an inference somebody wrote. You take each one apart and price what it costs when it is wrong.
- 24.3Dashboards and Shop-Floor Analytics: What Changes When the Number MovesPractitioner6 lessons · 1 h 50 minOne factory hangs nine screens, and you follow what happens to the numbers on them. You see why a number that describes belongs somewhere different from one that triggers an action, and why an average hides the only hour a supervisor could have acted in. You learn to set an alert threshold from the process instead of from the target. And you see what it costs when a line drawn for information changes how people record.
- 24.4Automation and Robotics in Apparel: Why the Cloth DecidesAdvanced6 lessons · 1 h 50 minYou price one jacket order and one robot cell honestly. You see why limp cloth is the hardest material in manufacturing to handle, and how to tell what automates before you ask for a price. You see why the payback turns on how many styles the machine must run rather than how fast it runs, why the line gains less than the rating promises, and what decides whether the machine still works in year three.
- 24.5Energy, Water and Environmental Monitoring: What the Meter Cannot AttributePractitioner6 lessons · 1 h 40 minYou take one knit factory, one year of its own meters, and an electricity account that rose faster than its consumption. You see why a whole-site meter can say what happened and never what moved. You learn to rank a submeter by addressable baseload rather than by size. You see why the window you compare over decides the smallest change you can prove. And what a monitoring programme actually paid for.
- 24.6Planning a Digital Transformation: What to Do First, and What to DeclineAdvanced6 lessons · 2 hSeven proposals sit on one table at one factory. Each has a positive case, and only three people can specify any of them. You will see why a portfolio is limited by one person rather than by money, why two good programmes can be negative together, what an undated benefit hides, what waiting really buys, and why the best item on the list was never on it.
Track exam
12 questions drawn from a larger bank, across the courses in this track, passed at 70%. 3 attempts, then it locks for 7 days. It is worth finishing the courses first.
Sit the track exam