Envisioning the future of industry with future of technologies-Part 3: Digital manufacturing
If digital can really make a MEGA RADICAL impact it is surely on the manufacturing shop floor. Leading manufacturing organizations like GE, Volkswagen, ABB, Siemens, Samsung etc. are already working at high levels of maturity on Industry 4.0 leveraging the potential of Internet of things (IOT) and advanced analytics. The prospects of connecting the Enterprise technology (ERP’s) to the Shop floor Operation technologies is very exciting
- Connecting legacy machines via M2M sensors and data analytics for newer levels of productivity on a complex automotive shop floor delivering near JIT productions, single piece flow and optimized inventory.
- Network collaboration – Real time Final assembly (FAS) integration and visibility with supplier production floors for SQC/ APQP enabled preventive quality management and JIT self-certified supplies. For a global leader in bike manufacturing assembling only the final product approx. 60-70% of their product value happened outside the factory boundaries with limited to no real time visibility.
- Connecting and integrating distant remote operations like steel plants, mines and oil and gas exploration like never before
- “Pay as you consume” New manufacturing business models like Market place of spare production capacities of machines ( a Coimbatore idea in a manufacturing conference)
- Demand driven manufacturing – Dynamically rescheduling production of finished good SKU’s to optimal profitability index for the firm
- More make to order DIY (do it yourself) products – Empowering the customer to dynamically configure his product and real time see the progress till receipt.
- Design anywhere (& design democratization) manufacture anywhere – leveraging new production technologies like 3D printing to build a virtual global capability to manufacture and deliver products real time at the point of consumption, near to customers, maximum value engineered products and minimum wastage.
- Faster new production prototyping and testing with additive manufacturing technologies
Digital will lead to new competitive and differentiating shop floor capabilities of demand shaping and profitable perfect orders with optimal intelligent scheduling, adaptive responsive manufacturing, collaborative operations, Real time capacity management, inventory visibility, Dynamic Kanban and Lean automaton to name a few. Let’s look at an illustrative sample smart agile responsive factory of the future here.
- A production planning work bench (coordinating with the sales workbench and the shop floor operating systems) for demand sensing , shaping & adaptive planning the perfect cost order, dynamic scheduling on the floor, coordinating JIT raw material supplies from supplier – (New technologies – collaborative control towers connected with enterprise IT , Advanced analytics AI and ML, GPS, IOT )
- A smart shop floor for coordinated manufacturing and inventory management, remote operations, digital assisted preventive asset maintenance, real time item routing at SKU level to customer configuration, on-demand spare parts management – (New technologies – IOT , M2M sensors, Advanced data analytics and recommendation engines , AI and ML, AR assisted digital twins, Machine learning process controls , Wearable for the production floor supervisors for alerts and exception management, smart metering for optimizing power consumption, Integrated ERP + MES + IOT, 3 D printing )
- Collaborative planning, forecasting , replenishment, inventory and quality management with suppliers on an integrated network – ( New technologies – Vendor applications , CPFR Remote operations solutions for real time factory, network inventory optimizer analytics, supplier control towers)
- Faster NPD (new product development) crowdsourcing social insights and unmet needs, open source designing with customers and geo located designers , rapid prototyping and faster testing and launch with learning algorithms – ( New technologies – Social analytics , crowd sourced design platforms , AI modelled profiles and deep learning, 3 D printing of prototypes , AI enables test validation cycles)
- All these hypothetically delivered on a Manufacturing GDM (Global delivery model) platform which the IT services players have well established over the last 2 decades.
Interesting world of possibilities is just beginning for smart manufacturing with Industry 4.0
