The Phasing-in of Smart Manufacturing
The advancement of the automation industry over the past decade has moved far beyond selling portions of equipment. This is because the innovations from suppliers and engineers around the world have collectively brought about the fourth Industrial Revolution.
This extensive adoption by the manufacturing industry around the world of ICTs is now crafting the stone work to make way for disruptive approaches to development, production and the complete logistics chain. Many technological innovations have occurred in the past few years and as this latest industrial revolution moves into the future, there are significant implications for the industrial workforce.
Software is motivating the advances in today's manufacturing and for the companies that embrace it, smart manufacturing has the potential to trigger innovation and enhance productivity, facilitate greater worker and product safety, therefore improve operations.
Not more than a decade ago, several companies, especially in Asia, considered their factories albatross. Many industrialised countries faced in the last decades a reduction in the share of industry in GDP. The share of industry in GDP is going down close to 10 percent in France, UK.
Germany has stopped at 23 percent. India is above 30 percent, and China even higher. A variety of factors has changed the perception of manufacturing. Smart manufacturing emerged as the convergence of data acquisition, analytics, and automated control to enhance the overall effectiveness of a company's factory network.
A new era of 21st century Smart Manufacturing will optimise factories and supply networks by starting to transform them into profit centres. For most manufacturers, embracing smart manufacturing will happen in stages.
This manufacturing intelligence enables the factory floor to become a profitable innovation center. Manufacturers who create realistic strategies, put them into practice and begin to act now can stay ahead of the competition and reap the benefits of smart manufacturing creating way for sustainable and profitable growth.
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