Rockwell Automation's 8th annual State of Smart Manufacturing Report reveals that the number one obstacle manufacturers face in 2023 is balancing profitable growth without sacrificing quality. The study also reveals a greater emphasis on accessing data’s true potential and increasing the adoption of technology to build resilience, enable agility, and increase sustainability.
Gartner says two key challenges in the race to implement smart manufacturing strategy revolves around technology, commercial availability and data integrity, and aligning supply chain and factory on smart manufacturing benefits and plans.
Gartner cautions that as automation of data and information flows expands beyond the factory, the need to manage supply chain convergence grows. For smart manufacturing, this means evaluating the processes used in logistics, planning and sourcing, and customer service against those used in manufacturing operations, and designing cross-functional performance metrics to assess total value generated for the customer.
ABI Research's director of research, Michael Larner, comments that in an ideal world, industrial and manufacturing firms could simply focus on producing goods and maximizing their profits through innovation.
"However, that’s not the world we live in, and they face several manufacturing challenges that they have little to no control over. Firms can prepare to act upon them by first identifying and evaluating the most significant issues. From there, strategic steps can be taken to ensure that production plants and supply chains are equipped with the technologies needed to build operational resiliency," he added.
For his part, Thomas Lai, vice president and general manager for APJ at Boomi, predicts it will get more challenging as manufacturing organizations think about setting up other markets.
"And as global supply chain complexity increases over time, to your point on resilience, for example, I think what I'd say is that if you, if you look at what's out here, the state is strong, but there are opportunities for further improvement to continue to be in a leadership position," he continued.
Industrial modernisation challenges and opportunities
Asked to name some industrial modernisation challenges and opportunities believes that the opportunities that exist for manufacturers are to better harness data both inside and outside their four walls.
"A lot of things are happening with trading partners, whether those trading partners provide components, logistics, services, and or component testing and delivery to the end customer," begins Lai. "The notion of how we are agile from a capacity standpoint, efficient with capital dollars, and efficient with the lapsed time, will become more important as businesses continue to thrive, and quite honestly. Manufacturers are one of the businesses that are affected by industry changes because they carry so much work and process."
He concluded that the near-term opportunities can be acquired with better visibility between raw materials to when they get cash, and all those different endpoints in between.
The integration conundrum
Can integration platforms help manufacturers remain resilient and thrive amid all the disruptions and uncertainties that manufacturers continue to face post-pandemic?
"This (integration) remains a daunting task for any CIO because on the one hand "you've got these unknowing issues you've got to defend against which are at any moment some linkage in your supply chain could need to be swapped out effectively."
Thomas Lai
"But just because of whether it's a supply chain shortage, war, or any number of variables. And so, resilience and adaptability are key," he opined.
Tips for evaluating platforms
When evaluating platforms as part of their modernisation initiative, Lai opined that one set of capabilities focuses on how to improve the utilization of the existing resource pool.
"In this case, it could be systems that have data inside of them. Can I access the data? Can I get that data from Point A to Point B? And how can I improve the quality of that data so that it's used for decision making whether it's AI or people right, because those things always need good data to make good decisions," he continued.
The second use case, he continued centres on the possibility of reusing the same technology to help take advantage of market opportunity. "Whether that scale the business, enters new markets, buys other companies, gets new consumers or customers. Oftentimes a lot of technology decisions are made with one or the other, but not both in mind," he quipped.
He suggested that CIOs look at the future state think as a single go-to-market problem with the ideal framework providing the CIO with the ability to handle both through one environment.
Click on the PodChat player to hear Lai elaborate on how data can help manufacturers thrive against future adversity.
- Describe the current state of digitalisation across Asia's manufacturing sector.
- Can you name some industrial modernisation challenges and opportunities?
- How will technology modernisation help manufacturers leverage data analytics to improve operational efficiency for their logistics?
- Manufacturing environments typically are heavy in the use of operational technologies, including IoT. How should CIOs approach the integration of OT and IT technologies?
- How can integration platforms help manufacturers remain resilient and thrive amid disruptions and uncertainty?
- What is your advice for CIOs evaluating integration platforms in the quest to modernise the manufacturing process?
