Digital Transformation in Manufacturing

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The Digital Transformation in Manufacturing and supply chain is one of the most promising and emerging area. This is the area where most of the manufacturing organisations discovered the power of Digitisation and Digitalisation during covid pandemic.

The Companies who were already had some form of digital transformation strategy and executed program during covid pandemic were able to handle the supply chain and manufacturing uncertainties much better than the ones who were not ready.

The DX priorities that will see the largest investment in 2022 include Back Office Support and Infrastructure, Smart Manufacturing, and Digital Supply Chain Optimization. Together, these three investment areas will represent more than $620 billion in DX spending in the year 2022.

IDC Report on Digital Transformation Spending.

"Digital transformation and AI-driven quality control in manufacturing lead to higher product quality, reduced waste, and improved customer satisfaction." Reference: Sundararajan, E., Udayakumar, S., Chandrasekaran, M., & Subramaniam, R. (2020).

Today we will explore how Digital Transformation in Manufacturing plays a role and what are the key use cases where you can make a significant impact.

Chasing the right use case in your manufacturing and supply chain is as important as starting your transformation program.

Asset Efficiency:

Imagine having real-time visibility into your manufacturing operations and Supply chain. With Realtime insights, you can track and analyze critical metrics like uptime, scrap, throughput, and cycle time.?

By leveraging systematic BI dashboards and embracing a daily production improvement journey, you can optimize performance and identify areas for improvement. Predictive maintenance ensures timely maintenance alerts for key equipment, keeping operations running smoothly.

Combine the power of realtime visibility with AI and you have the power of predictive capabilities and AI. The predictive maintenance requires a realtime data as well as machine learning algorithms to be able to predict. You can also monitor and predict other key metrics by using machine learning algorithms.

Drive Predictive Quality:

Are Quality issues costing you time and money? AI can be a game-changer. By harnessing computer vision systems and image analytics, you can quickly detect defects. Employing statistical process control (SPC) and anomaly detection helps you identify and address process issues proactively.

A Typical computer vision setup helps you to identify part present or absent, defects on the part, sorting of the products more accurately. This kind of computer vision setup needs development with the help of larger image data and lot of good and bad examples, how a defect could appear. Once you have the data, you could set up your infra and drive your Manufacturing to the next level.

Embrace Predictive quality for your manufacturing for bigger impact on reduced scrap, waste or customer related issue.

Optimize Your Supply Chain:

Streamline your supply chain with realtime and predictive insights. AI in manufacturing and supply chain can help you predict raw material shortages and anticipate finished goods' stock-outs at customer locations.

Leverage predictive logistics to ensure smooth movement of key materials. Gain data visibility across warehouses, and consumption points, and track truck movements to reduce waste and enhance efficiency.

During covid pandemic imaging how the vaccines would have been transported with high efficiency across the supply chain if they had to maintain it within a specific temperature range. This was all possible with the help IoT Temperature sensors in the supply chain and rigorous tracking with the help of digital tools.

Embrace Automation and Robotics:

Imagine an efficient, error-free supply chain. Automation and robotics can make it a reality. Deploy collaborative robots (cobots) at end-of-line processes in discrete manufacturing, eliminating manual labor and boosting productivity.?The cobots can handle complex tasks as putting a jar in a carton or closing the carton or now a days they can even work in a kitchen making patty, check out Flippy cobot.

Welding robots on automotive assembly lines ensure precision and consistency they have been used from last several years now. AGVs and ASRS can transform your warehousing and material delivery and make the warehouses without much of a human intervention.

More Use Cases for Digital Transformation in Manufacturing:

Depending on your industry and specific needs, you may consider following-

• Energy management - business intelligence and AI for actionability
• Additive manufacturing (3D printing) for spare parts and prototyping
• Leveraging AR for remote maintenance and expert led troubleshooting, online training
• VR and AR for 3D immersive reviews of a Smart Factory.
• Could computing for Digital transformation- Use of cloud for your data storage and compute needs instead of using on premise compute infrastructure and servers.

Leverage the immense potential of AI and analytics in transforming your operations and supply chain.?

Take the leap into Industry 4.0 and unleash the power of data-driven decision-making. Let's revolutionize your industry together! ??

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Amit Kurhekar is a Digital Transformation Expert with over two decades of experience in Fintech and CPG.

He regularly writes on the topics of????#digitalbusinesstransformation