Many organizations do realize a significant growth and are eager to grow even more. But they struggle to find the right people to support their growth ambitions. They see many experienced engineers, operators and other skilled workforce go into retirement. Others are not ready to embrace the changes introduced by Industry4.0 skills. These companies are desperately looking for talent with the right experience and skills to support their digital transformation efforts. These organizations will have to look for smart solutions to this talent shortage. Doing more with less, seems the only way forward to stay competitive. A more efficient use of human resources is essential, and training and re-skilling efforts will need to be accelerated. Moreover, they will have to look for ways to make factory operations more efficient, and requiring less human intervention.
How can AI and other technology help?
Automation and digitalization of processes usually lead to a significant reduction of manual intervention and to a streamlining of operations. It is calculated that, in 25 year’s time, automation has led to a growth in output of 70 % while the available manufacturing workforce decreased by about 30%. Introducing an MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) can therefore enable the workforce to handle more operations with the same employee count.
In many cases, AI (Artificial Intelligence) can be introduced to gather and analyze the available data as a decision-enhancing tool: it helps the manufacturing workforce to make better informed decisions without needing to manually collect the required information.
And technology can also assist in the process of operator training and onboarding, by providing digital twins of the ‘live’ manufacturing environment and thus creating a real-life training environment.
Sustainability and environmental concern used to be superficial afterthoughts and nice-to-haves, public relations efforts rather than genuine concerns. Nowadays, decarbonization, energy efficiency, and reducing waste are priorities for most manufacturers. Partly because the European Greendeal and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) are pushing them to rethink their footprint throughout the value chain. But the cost of energy consumption adds fuel (pun intended) to the manufacturing industry’s efforts in this area. Energy-efficiency is more than an obligation, it has become a matter of common business sense.
How can AI and other technology help?
By automating the manufacturing processes, companies usually manage to significantly optimize these processes. Optimizing these processes will not only lead to a direct reduction of the energy usage, it will also generate a better yield and product quality, which in turn leads to less usage of rough materials and less waste thanks to a significantly lower number of errors in the production process. AI can make energy management storage decisions based on its predictions of when energy will be most in-demand and the data it collects from real-time renewable energy sources and network conditions.
Ensuring continuity of manufacturing and availability implies a well-developed strategy for risk mitigation. This goes way further than avoiding interruptions in production and thus missing out on sales. It also seriously affects the manufacturer’s reputation and can thus impact future business far worse than the immediate loss caused by temporary disruptions.
Cyberthreats feature high in the list of threats cited most often nowadays. Ever-increasing and complex threats coming from cyberspace require robust cybersecurity. And today, with the shop floor no longer disconnected from the outside world and the IoT, it has never been more important to entrust cybersecurity to experts. Consider for a second that a hacker manages to get access the manufacturer’s operational technology (OT) and can tamper with the settings that ensure the safety of the operational environment. This could well lead to extremely dangerous situations.
How can AI and other technology help?
AI and machine learning are now becoming essential to information security, as these technologies are capable of swiftly analyzing millions of data sets and tracking down a wide variety of cyberthreats — from malware menaces to shady behaviour that might result in a phishing attack.
These technologies continually learn and improve, drawing data from past experiences and present to pinpoint new varieties of attacks that can occur today or tomorrow. A worthwhile investment in this hyper-connected era of Industry 4.0
Furthermore, the importance of a reliable and encompassing OT security environment cannot be overestimated. Security solutions specifically aimed at the OT (operating technology) are essential because they have the continuity of operations as the primary objective, and they know how to deal with both the physical and digital aspects of OT.
Industry 4.0 is the term commonly used to describe the rapid change to technology in the manufacturing industry due to increasing interconnectivity and smart automation.
Added value is created for manufacturers by combining technologies such as advanced robotics and artificial intelligence, machine-to-machine (M2M) communication and the Internet of Things(IoT) in order to reap the benefits from the automation of traditional manufacturing and industrial practices. This integration includes the use of smart (sensor-equipped) machines that can analyze and diagnose issues without the need for human intervention.
As the production environment is drawn into the digital world, it will also benefit from other emerging trends such as 5G, which will allow for virtually infinite connectivity.
And other technologies will contribute to an even more productive and cost-effective organization. Technologies such as augmented reality and digital twins will considerably contribute to a better operation, allowing to prepare everything and everyone thoroughly for the job before actually taking them into production.
According to McKinsey, manufacturers that have successfully embarked on a digital transformation journey, have reaped huge business benefits. These include 30 to 50 percent reductions of machine downtime, 15 to 30 percent improvements in labour productivity, 10 to 30 percent increases in throughput, and 10 to 20 percent decreases in the cost of quality. But in order to reap those benefits, the transformation journey should be sufficiently prepared and integrated with the general business strategy and culture.
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