Manufacturing companies
have traditionally been slow to react to the advent of digital technologies
like intelligent robots, drones, sensor technology, artificial intelligence,
nanotechnology & 3d Printing.
Industry 4.0 has changed
manufacturing. At a high-level, Industry 4.0 represents the vision of the
interconnected factory where all equipment is online, and in some way, is also
intelligent and capable of making its own decisions.
The explosion in
connected devices and platforms, abundance of data from field devices and rapidly
changing technology landscape has made it imperative for companies to quickly
adapt their products and services and move from physical world to a digital
world.
Today, Manufacturing is
transforming from mass production to the one characterized by mass
customization. Not
only must the right products be delivered to the right person for the right
price, the process of how products are designed and delivered must now be at a
level of sophistication.
First step in
digitization is to analyze current state of all systems starting R&D,
procurement, production, warehousing, logistics, marketing, sales &
service.
The digitization of
manufacturing impacts every aspect of operations and the supply chain. It starts
with equipment design, and continues through product design, production process
improvement and, ultimately, monitoring and improving the end-user experience.
Digital transformation revolutionizes
the way manufacturers share and manage product & engineering design, specs on
the cloud by collaborating across geographies.
Down time and reliability
are critical when it comes to the operation of equipment and machines on a shop
floor. With Big data Analytics, the quick and easy access to this operation
data, production information, inventory, quality data gives ability to quickly
adjust to machine status across the enterprise.
Quality and yield is
directly related to manufacturing processes as to how raw materials are used,
inspected, manufactured, and how everything comes together. This really
determines the quality level of the products. Cognitive computing enables earlier
identification of nascent quality problems, increased production yield, and
reduction of problems that lead to service and warranty costs.
Implementing smarter
resource and supply chain optimization strategies helps to improve the cost
efficiency of these resources like energy consumption, worker safety, and
employee resource efficiency.
Service Excellence is
also an important part of the strategy that companies are using to achieve
digital transformation in the manufacturing space. Connected Devices (IoT) are
changing the paradigm of delivering after-sales service. Some of the advantage are
most prevalent in several selected industries, such as industrial equipment,
power generation and HVAC providers:
· Push Service
Notifications
o
How
is your asset health?
o
How
is your asset usage?
· Predictive/ PreventiveMaintenance
· Break-Down Assistance
· Usage-based Billing
· Spares
General Electric’s jet
engines combine cloud-based services, analytics and on-line sensors to report
usage and status and help predict potential failures. The result is improved
uptime and lower cost of ownership.
Additive manufacturing
(3D printers) for prototyping help shorten the iteration cycles in the design
process and help to turn innovation into value. 3D printing is also quickly
gaining ground in the commercial manufacturing of customized products in low
volumes.
Smart machines integrated
with forklifts, storage shelves and production equipment. These machines are
able to take autonomous decisions and communicate with each other to drive
material replenishment, trigger manufacturing and much more.
Industry 4.0, allowing
manufacturers to have more flexible manufacturing processes that can better
react to customer demands.
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