In the age of Industry 4.0, smart technologies are likely on most manufacturers’ radars, including yours. But is your manufacturing landscape as smart as it could be? By investing in making your business’s IT even smarter, you can support:
- Business continuity
- Reduction of costs and resource spend
- Better decision making, across IT and the wider business
- A leaner, more productive workforce
- Increased operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) efficiency
“The right mix of technology adoption that strengthens the core (process automation, data analytics) while also pushing the edges can improve efficiency”
—Deloitte Manufacturing Industry Outlook, 2023 1
Leverage insights and aid decision-making across your business.
Artificial intelligence (AI), automation, augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) and Industrial IoT (IIoT) technologies can aid decision-making across IT operations and the wider business.
For example, they could:
- Provide data-driven insights, including predictive analytics
- Automate repetitive tasks such as data input and data processing
- Model and plan changes before they’re made
In order to make good decisions, businesses need access to reliable, real-time, actionable data. AI can help with this by constantly collecting and analysing data—from historical data to market and industry trends—in real time and turning it into insights. For example, AI can make suggestions on lower-cost suppliers or show you areas where costs can be cut.
Immersive technologies like AR and VR can revolutionise decision making by making it easier to visualise changes and ideas before they’re made.
“[Immersive technologies] are highly advantageous for manufacturing owing to their capacity for high quality visualisation and intuitive interactivity. This opens the door to many innovative applications, such as remote maintenance and training, as well as greatly benefiting concept design and review”
Digital Catapult —a leading UK authority on advanced digital technology 2
Support OT architecture and drive efficiency across your business.
By harnessing the power of smart technologies throughout your IT infrastructure, you could support the smooth operation and maintenance of OT equipment and machines and help make your business more efficient.
Automation and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technologies such as intelligent sensors can enable predictive maintenance of OT across your facilities. Predictive maintenance technologies continuously gather and interpret data to assess the efficiency of machinery and predict when that machinery is likely to stop working. Any deviation from normal operating temperatures, energy consumption and vibrations trigger maintenance alerts. This can enable the reduction of costly scheduled maintenance and the potential downtime that comes with it.
Another benefit of IIoT, automation and robotics is the efficiency they can bring to onboarding, training and workplace safety. Intelligent video analytics and intelligent sensors can monitor dangerous areas, sounding an alert when someone is not complying with safety regulations or if they enter an off-limits area. Automatic machine shutdowns can also be triggered, stopping accidents before they happen. This could enable a leaner workforce by reducing the amount of human monitoring required.
AI can predict demand and impediments to supply chains. Paired with intelligent sensors, this can help your plant operations managers balance inventory, aiding in reducing the costs associated with overstocking and stockouts, and optimising factory space.
Boost business resilience, sustainability and security.
Help mitigate the impact of global skills and materials shortages on your business. Smart technologies can greatly aid manufacturers with building resilience and agility.
To name a few use cases:
- You could use robotic process automation to enable a leaner, more efficient workforce, lessening the impact of skills shortages
- You could leverage insights gleaned from AI technologies to diversify your supplier network and inform your supply chain resilience strategies and sustainability initiatives
- You could use AI and IIoT technologies such as intelligent sensors and RFID tags to gain insights into your transportation and logistics, enabling the mitigation of delays and disruptions
- You could reduce the likelihood and impact of disruption by modelling changes in advance
“Manufacturers have increased their digital investment over the past few years and accelerated the adoption of emerging technologies. Companies with higher digital maturity have shown greater resilience”
—Deloitte 3
AI can provide the insight and forecasting needed to diversify your supply chain and work beyond your Tier 1 suppliers. By supporting this diversification, you can help lessen the impact of supply shortages and logistics disruptions.
Sustainability initiatives can also be informed by the use of smart technologies. Utilise intelligent sensors and AI to spot and trace flaws more quickly, lessening disruption and waste. Unsure where you could reduce waste and water usage? Use AI- and machine learning (ML)-derived insights to help your facilities and equipment run better on less.
Using digital twins, you can model any changes before physically making them, meaning you can predict and mitigate any disruption caused by implementation. This can help lessen impact on your business and assist in preventing downtime should there be any problems in the build.
Smart technologies can also aid with securing your business and machinery from cyberthreats. By leveraging comprehensive digital protections and insights, you can help safeguard your inventory, facilities, property and data.
When we leverage intelligence from technology and humans together, we can reach new levels of productivity, efficiency and foresight. With IT operations focused on harnessing the potential of smart technologies, businesses can see dramatic improvements across their entire ecosystem, from OT efficiency through to driving sustainability. Help your business run like a well-oiled machine and explore the possibilities.
We’ve worked with many manufacturers and helped them leverage the potential of smart technologies. Our industry experts have decades of relevant experience, enabling them to provide practical and effective advice. Then, our global network, computing and security expertise and extensive ecosystem can help you put those technologies into practice. We can help you de-risk transformation, accelerate change and achieve the promise of Industry 4.0.