You’ve heard of “light beer” and “light cola,” but what about “automation light?” It’s a term that’s been popping up in some circles lately as global companies expand manufacturing into low-cost countries where capital budgets are severely constrained. Just as Bud Light and Miller Lite profess to offer reduced-calorie solutions for beer drinkers who don’t want to put on extra weight, so-called automation light systems aim to provide reduced automation solutions for manufacturers who can’t afford to add too much cost and complexity.

“We have about 30 customers in our global account program that have largely standardized on our products, and I would say that at least 10 out of the 30 have automation light initiatives, where they’re trying to reduce capital cost, reduce the need for IT (information technology) and reduce the need for support,” says Ken Deken, vice president, portfolio management, for Rockwell Automation Inc., the Milwaukee-based automation controls supplier.

The automation light term is one that’s familiar to Ed Thompson as well. “We’ve had customers tell us, ‘We want to do this, but we don’t want to install a great big, heavy system on top of it, so we’re trying to do automation light,’ ” observes Thompson, who is vice president, U.S. operations, for Neoris, a Miami-based information technology (IT) consulting company that is a certified integrator for SAP AG, the Walldorf, Germany-based enterprise software supplier.

Neoris has done integration work for manufacturers in low-cost countries including Brazil, Argentina and Mexico using an SAP application called Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (MII) that supports links from plant floor devices to enterprise applications and databases. “There’s a library of integration components that MII supports that has made it very simple, very cheap and very fast to integrate for people who have smaller budgets,” says Thompson. “It’s a lightweight solution that’s been great for emerging markets—places where investments in technology are harder to justify because labor costs are lower.”

Small footprint

Not everyone has heard the “automation light” terminology. “It sounds like a bean counter term,” quips one system integrator who has had project proposals quashed by budgetary constraints.

But many agree that a need exists for small-footprint, low-cost manufacturing systems in the world’s developing regions. Low labor costs in these places may mean that manufacturers can’t justify the cost of full-blown automation and production management systems with all the features of a comprehensive manufacturing execution system (MES) software suite. What’s more, in many low cost regions, there may be limited engineering and IT talent available locally to provide complex system support.

But global companies still need to manufacture products in close proximity to their customers in developing regions of the world. And they want to maintain commonality with existing company systems elsewhere, as well as the ability to scale up small-footprint systems later as needed. Further, even with a small-footprint, “automation light” system in place, managers still need access to plant floor data for diagnostics, and to meet product quality and traceability requirements.

One company that is familiar with the challenges of going global is The Procter & Gamble Co., the Cincinnati-based consumer products giant. John Kuley, technical section head for P&G’s Household Care Business Unit, notes that his Unit has in recent years adopted a global standard for manufacturing detergents and other liquids that includes a small-footprint control system for use in low-cost countries. The system has so far been used in places including China, Malaysia, Argentina, Venezuela, Russia and Egypt.

In larger-market countries, such as the United States, P&G typically uses Allen-Bradley ControlLogix programmable automation controllers (PACs) from Rockwell Automation, Kuley says. But the small footprint system relies on a lower-horsepower Allen-Bradley CompactLogix PAC, he notes. Other components include a personal computer (PC) running InTouch factory software supplied by Wonderware, of Lake Forest, Calif., as well as SQL database capability.

Cut with care

It doesn’t pay to scrimp too much, Kuley indicates. In the past, when capital pressures were extremely high in a developing country, the P&G Unit tended to install “as simple and basic a system as possible,” he says. “But we’re finding that even with the small applications, if something goes wrong, you do need some decent diagnostic tools and historian capability to go back and figure out what happened.” Consequently, Kuley notes, the P&G Unit is working on small-footprint systems that are “more full-featured” and include “a little more MES functionality than we may have accepted in the past.”

That’s a lesson that other global companies are learning as well. When a Tier One ...