Suitability of Industry 4.0 Technologies for Improving Dental Implant Production.A Preparatory Study at Nobel Biocare

Abstract: Nobel Biocare is a world-leading manufacturer of innovative dental solutions. The company has two production facilities in Karlskoga specified for producing dental implants and abutments to customers like dentists, dental technicians and their patients. Nobel Biocare has identified possibilities to improve its production processes using the concept of Industry 4.0. This thesis aims to assist Nobel Biocare by conducting a preparatory study investigating the suitability of implementing technologies from the concept of Industry 4.0 to improve company-specific processes. Suitability is based on a total of five criteria, which are: investment costs, production sustainability, monetary profit, effect on product quality and time savings in the production. The study should furthermore determine what demands are posed upon the company for this implementation to be successful. The thesis is treated as a project containing three major phases related to assessing the situation and identifying improvement areas, suggesting technologies from Industry 4.0 to improve these areas and assessing the suitability of the suggested improvements. The methods used were qualitative, consisting of informal and formal interviews with open-ended questions. This was complemented by internal and external documents and previous studies as well as observations. The thesis defined ten technologies as the core of Industry 4.0 and applied these to identified potential improvements within the company's processes. A total of twelve main areas of improvement were identified, highlighting waste, repetitive tasks, and other production related challenges. A total of 15 proposed solutions were formulated based on the identified improvement areas. Among these proposed solutions, Industry 4.0 technology automation was applied in seven of the areas, some sort of digitalisation was applied in four areas, Augmented Reality (AR) or Virtual Reality (VR) was applied in two areas and Artificial Intelligence (AI) was applied within two proposed solutions. A total of ten of the proposed solutions were found suitable based on suitability criteria and three were found somewhat suitable. Out of the suitable implementations, five were related to automation, two to digitalisation and one within VR and AR. Artificial Intelligence was found suitable in two of the proposed improvements. Some of the requirements which are to be posed upon the company in order for the implementation of Industry 4.0 technologies to be successful were furthermore determined. These requirements were in regards to network speed and capacity, education of employees, cybersecurity and data ownership.