Husky Injection Molding Systems, an industrial technology provider to the plastics processing community, hosted a one-day event at its EMEA headquarters in Dudelange, Luxembourg to officially unveil its digital, state-of-the-art Next Generation Operating Model (NGOM). The event was attended by industry and media professionals from throughout the region and showcased how the company has partnered with the Luxembourg Government Departments of Economy and Labor, as well as Siemens, to develop a new digitalised NGOM moulding solution.
“The world is experiencing an accelerated pace of digitalisation and it is influencing every aspect of our lives. Husky recognises this shift and we have been actively working to embrace digitalisation for some time,” said John Galt, Husky’s President and CEO. “The NGOM program revolutionises the way we do business, offering enhanced capabilities designed to deliver solutions with unmatched speed and flexibility, reduced overall cost, and a heightened, more accessible experience. Having an end-to-end fully digitalised architecture allows us to leverage our global capability and quickly scale to new opportunities, so that we can enable our customers to be more competitive and effectively respond to continuously changing consumer buying trends. We are very excited about this development and the possibilities it creates.
”Husky’s pioneering NGOM process has streamlined hardware ordering and manufacturing from a practice that historically takes several weeks down to a few hours. For the first time ever, customised stack components can be configured through a web interface and are then manufactured in a state-of-the-art laboratory through a completely automated process. In addition, because the virtual and physical environments work together within a closed loop, the system is able to continuously improve on the products and services delivered. Information is fed back into the system so Husky’s subject matter experts can regularly improve upon quality and speed.
“This project is a tangible example of our digital innovation strategy in the priority sector of Industry 4.0. The project is fully aligned with our sustainable economic development policies that aim to support the use of digital technologies in the manufacturing industry. Our competitive business environment allowed such an innovative project to be implemented in Luxembourg, which contributes to the technical and human development of Industry 4.0,” said Etienne Schneider, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of the Economy.
“An ever-increasing number of industrial enterprises worldwide are well on the way towards Industrie 4.0 and are already improving their competitive standing with digital solutions,” said Klaus Helmrich, Member of the Management Board of Siemens. “This applies to all sectors of industry with rapidly changing market demands in which products must be manufactured ever more quickly, flexibly and in diminishing quantities. We look forward to continuing to work collaboratively with Husky on advancing their capability in this area.”
In early 2017, Husky began working with the Luxembourg Government’s Ministry of the Economy and Luxinnovation to support research and development of an end-to-end digital environment proof of concept. As the program has gained momentum Husky is training a larger NGOM team, which is supported by the Luxembourg Digital Skills Bridge Program. Throughout this same year, Husky also worked with Siemens on software development and overall process flow. NGOM began taking orders from pilot lines in 2018 and is now fully operational, producing parts for customers in real-time, with ongoing validation and closed loop to industrialise the solution. The system can connect to different Husky locations in both Luxembourg and Canada, which the company says provides global consistency and transparency among multiple manufacturing sites, while enabling 'unprecedented capability' in speed to market for customers.
