An article about the limits of digitalization and automation and a fiery plea for the wealth of human experience
Our present day is filled with the pursuit of digitizing as many processes as possible, both technical and formal, with the aim of saving time and - associated with this - achieving even greater efficiency. After all, saving time usually means saving manpower, i.e. reducing personnel costs. Especially in times of economic weakness, cost-saving measures have top priority. This applies not only to the production sector, but also to the particularly pronounced bureaucracy in Germany and its often lengthy approval processes, especially for new procedures. Reading the numerous publications, it is easy to get the impression that the introduction of digital processes is a major step towards rationalization.
Information about possible limitations is rarely to be found. Apparently, digital process solutions are possible almost everywhere and it is only a question of willingness to commit oneself accordingly for one's own area. A whole new industry has developed for the introduction and development of digital process solutions, which strives to develop the optimum system for every application. There seem to be no limits; "digital" seems to be a kind of magic word for all cases.
Digital processes complement the automation that is at least partially present in most production facilities today by evaluating process data at high speed and forwarding it to the processing unit without the need for labor-intensive human intervention. In addition, automated processes are usually more error-free than those that depend on the reliability of employees. However, automation and digitalization require that the processes controlled by them can be determined for the largest possible quantities and according to precisely fixed data - in a sense, sub-stages that can be recorded with mathematical precision. The more complex a process sequence is and the more factors can influence it, the more difficult it becomes to capture the laws required for automation. If these factors also run irregularly due to influences that can hardly be recorded, then automation and digital control become difficult or reach their limits.
Fully automated chrome plating at Hansgrohe in Offenburg - (Photo: Robert Piterek)
Electroplating
The latter applies to electroplating processes. Electrolytic metal deposition is subject to numerous influences that can be calculated under constant conditions, e.g. shape, distance between the electrodes, i.e. the electric field. In an electroplating shop with different shapes, surfaces and perhaps even changing compositions of the goods to be coated, as is the case in contract electroplating shops in particular, but also in many industrial companies, the electric field is subject to constant changes during the deposition process. Even on a single three-dimensional sheet metal part, the electric field varies locally. Attempts are made to minimize the differences by using appropriate, usually organic additives, but monitoring and control becomes problematic and can affect automation and digitalization. Nevertheless, the vast majority of electroplating shops also use automatic electroplating machines to meet the required quality standards. How is this possible?
With all the efforts to automate processes, the demand for consistent quality is accompanied by the desire to save on expensive human labor. However, this "human factor" still makes a significant contribution to ensuring that electroplating processes deliver largely consistent, flawless quality, despite the influences of the process and goods. The individual technical experience of electroplating personnel that contributes to this cannot be automated or digitized - not even with "artificial intelligence".
A practical example will illustrate this: As head of a production area of a large industrial group, I was also responsible for the electroplating department, where, among other things, switching elements for high-voltage systems had to be silver-plated. A particular quality feature was the perfect adhesion of the silver coating; even the smallest spots of flaking silver could lead to serious faults in the switch, possibly even to its explosion. One morning, I was inspecting the electroplating shop when the foreman informed me that the silver deposition was faulty and he had to suspend production of the relevant parts. The plant engineer who had been called in took a bath sample and sent it to the laboratory for analysis. At around 2 p.m., he told me that they thought they had found the fault. So we went to the electroplating shop to instruct the foreman to make the necessary bath correction and carry out a test run. The foreman replied that he had already been back in production for three hours; based on his experience, he had corrected the bath himself without a laboratory and the time lost as a result. This example shows how important the experience of the staff is, which cannot be compensated for by automation and digitalization.
I have reported several times in the past on the development of electroplating technology in Thailand. There is no specific and appropriately organized vocational training or even a defined, recognized final examination - as there is here at the Chamber of Industry and Commerce. The personnel must be trained individually in the respective company. The experience developed in the process is the "most precious treasure" of the individual employee, and it is in the company's best interest to preserve it. The company that I reported on briefly last year was anxious not to lose its staff and their experience during the coronavirus hysteria, despite the significant drop in orders, and offered employees who were initially not needed in the electroplating shop the opportunity to work temporarily on a farm in another part of Thailand. The employees largely took up the offer, thus keeping their jobs and the company retained the valuable experience.
The following experience illustrates the extent to which the experience of individual employees can be a hindrance to digitally controlled automation: In a large corporation with various production sites, the individual process steps, particularly in the surface technology area, i.e. the area with chemical treatment processes, should be set out in writing, as process instructions so to speak, so that production could continue at the same quality in the event of a change of production site. For this purpose, the functioning processes based on thorough investigation were meticulously set out in writing. Each individual treatment chemical was precisely specified and the supplier was obliged to notify the company of any changes in good time so that there would be enough time to test the changed chemical in detail before it was used.
The production in question was then actually moved to another site. However, despite the meticulous definition of the individual production steps and resources, considerable problems arose at the new site. The cause lay in seemingly insignificant details of handling by the employees. Little things that could hardly be formulated in regulations. After the foreman had been transferred from the original production site to the new plant, production there functioned as before at the old location.
This example shows that seemingly insignificant, barely recognizable influences can play a decisive role in the execution of processes, especially in chemical treatments. However, if they are not recognized, they cannot be fed into any automatic or digital system and can then lead to error results or quality losses. Not all human actions can be easily recognized and adopted by automated systems. At complex production points, personal employees can hardly be replaced; they and their experience can limit their replacement by automated systems. Despite automation and digitalization, the personal employee remains indispensable!
Automation during barrel galvanizing - (Photo: stock.adobe.com/josef)
Surface technology
Electroplating technology is not the only area in which human employees remain essential due to their experience. Another factor can also play a role here: Thinking in hierarchies - certain actions are reserved only for a superior, preferably with an academic title; the individual employee only has to carry out the work assigned to him. This attitude, which is often found in larger companies and public authorities, can also cost the companies concerned considerable resources because the experiences of employees are not taken into account due to the belief in "all-enabling digitally controlled automation". Only seemingly logical factors are then incorporated into the technology, while practical experience is ignored.
Another example of this: In the same company, bath-oven-sized switch boilers had to be pre-treated on the surface for subsequent painting. This was done in an automatic wheel blast machine, in which the parts were blasted with steel shot to make the surface of the goods corrosion-free for the subsequent painting. The system procured by my predecessor, against the advice of process engineers, "ate itself up" due to the limited volume of goods and its shape, resulting in high costs. A new system therefore needed to be procured. Of the various offers, one seemed ideally suited to our requirements. The supplier gave us the name of a reference company whose experience would confirm the functionality of the system on offer. I asked for a viewing appointment so that I could see the system for myself and - what was important to me - the surroundings.
A problem arose: I wanted to take the machine operator of our system with me to the inspection at the other end of Germany. At first I was refused, saying that I could only take my plant engineer with me. But the machine operator, the man on site, is far better able to assess and perhaps even discover important details in the plant than any supervisor operating outside the plant. After some difficult discussions, the three of us finally made the trip. On site, we were able to determine that the system was indeed functioning optimally. But the throughput of goods was so different to our own situation that the whole system proved unsuitable for us and we had to reject the offer. Our machine operator had identified the most significant problems in terms of system maintenance and operation in conjunction with our goods throughput and some other operational circumstances.
In Winkel's view, personal experience cannot be replaced by automation and digitalization, as the example of the disposal of toxic sludge shows - (Photo: stock.adobe.com/blende11.photo)
Approval authorities
Plant-related operating equipment is often subject to approval by the relevant authorities, often the responsible environmental agencies, which in turn also strive to speed up their work through digital processes. Digital processes must be "fed" with the relevant tasks, and this requires people with the relevant experience. Here, too, the hierarchical order has its influence, which can lead to economic losses of at least six figures, and not just for a single company. Here is an example relating to surface technology: about 30 years ago, when the disposal of "highly toxic electroplating sludge" was a hot topic, there were numerous disposal companies, some of which disposed of the hazardous waste in an unfair manner. Eventually, the trend towards recycling prevailed, and the recovery of the metal content, particularly by electrolysis, was offered for around DM 800 per ton, plus transportation, which was also expensive due to strict safety regulations.
A US company offered to process the sludge for reuse for around DM 250 per ton, including transportation, and referred to over ten years of experience with sludge from Asia, which had been processed with good results in the company in the USA. In view of the experience with dubious disposal companies and the disproportionately low price, the American offer was also suspected of being a dubious business - was the sludge even being dumped in the Atlantic? An offer from the company to visit the USA was rejected: a lower-ranking but knowledgeable employee was not authorized by the authorities to make such a trip, and a higher-ranking employee obviously had more important things to do and no specialist knowledge; and finally, the trip, the costs of which the company would even have covered, could have been seen as a bribe. Finally, I arranged a visit to Pennsylvania myself in connection with a private trip to the USA and was surprised to find a very clean factory building - with no smoking chimneys or large-scale sewage system.
The secret of the low offer price lay in a completely different procedure from the disposal companies operating in Germany: the very carefully selected and compositionally separated sludge was collected from those plants where sludge of the same type was produced in regular quantities and the different types of sludge were processed into metal-containing concentrates defined within certain limits; these were then sold to customers who could use them for their processes in the type then available. The fact that the metal content of the delivered sludge did not have to be isolated by electrolysis and then dissolved again for reuse meant that expensive process steps could be avoided and the goods could be offered at a favorable price. The treatment and processing of foams, which mainly came from concentration processes and only a few precipitation processes, also did not require large waste water or exhaust air treatment plants and therefore also contributed to low costs. The electroplating sludge thus became a raw material for the processing company in the USA to manufacture new products for other users - a raw material that contained higher metal contents than natural ores and could be extracted with less energy than ores, which usually require energy-intensive thermal digestion.
Sludge analysis and the logistics of transporting the sludge were essential for the American process in order to achieve rapid throughput and low storage volumes. A discussion with the American customs office also dispelled concerns that the sludge would be dumped untreated in the Atlantic, as strict controls meant that only sludge with a certain minimum metal content was permitted for processing.
As soon as I got back to Berlin, I was besieged by the officials in particular to report on the procedure. After my travel report was published in the magazine Galvanotechnik, it was only a relatively short time before the American company received permission to set up a sludge processing plant in Wurzen and thus save itself the trip across the Atlantic. The then Prime Minister of Saxony, Kurt Biedenkopf, personally attended the opening of the plant.
This case also shows that personal experience cannot be replaced by automation and digitalization and that far-reaching factors have a significant influence. The personal experience of decision-makers is also of considerable importance for public authorities, especially the licensing authorities that are essential for the economy. Factors that influence such decisions cannot all be taken from tables and reference books that can be transferred to a digital system, but rather require the most comprehensive expertise and experience possible; however, as this is more likely to be found among the clerks at the bottom of the hierarchies, if we wanted to improve the current situation, we would have to break with our hierarchical thinking.
Conclusion
Automation and digitalization are processes that enable considerable personnel savings, particularly in production, but also in administration, especially time savings, and can have a decisive impact on economic efficiency. However, they presuppose that as many influencing factors as possible are known and can be taken into account - almost like a mathematical formula.
Where the influences are no longer fully transparent due to their irregularity and diversity - as in many electroplating plants - and where individual human behavior is involved, automated processes controlled by digital technology can lead to bad investments and make processes more expensive. In addition, wrong decisions can prevent economic developments or delay them for years. Hierarchical thinking in the hierarchical administrative structure can also block decisions and ignore those with practical experience, who are often at the bottom of the administrative hierarchy. Greater consideration is desirable here.
Involving experienced practitioners in decision-making processes for the introduction of digitally controlled automation systems should be an essential requirement, especially in production companies, but also in offices responsible for approval. Decisions made solely by inexperienced managers can lead to costly mistakes that can hardly be corrected if the competition is cleverer and faster.
