Discover a Future of Possibilities - Factory of the Future

Has the urgency of transformation increased in your business after COVID-19 crisis? It should have!  The current situation forced us into a new world, but it is one in which we know how to emerge stronger, and faster. A true digital acceleration. The likes of which we have never seen.

COVID-19 has shifted priorities and mandates. Resiliency isn’t a buzz word. Just think of the changes in home office, home entertainment, digital retail services and healthcare. In short term, medical manufacturers, pharmaceutical and food companies seek to overcome production limits or reconfigure their production lines to completely different products (i.e. respirators instead of heaters, person protection equipment instead of T-shirts).

The forced SHIFT TO DIGITAL has helped overcome perceived barriers, literally overnight, and creates the opportunity to re-think our value chains.

In manufacturing, we have been progressing Industry 4.0.  In most cases, it has been about production automation, i.e. robots and machine control. However, the individual areas of a factory often remain islands: whether engineering, production, logistics, administration, sales or customer service. Digitization will dissolve these islands, exploit unused potential and give a new boost to efficiency, service and quality … and to the overall manufacturing value chain.

It is worth a closer look at how to address today’s challenges to improve flexibility and resiliency, while meeting business objectives. Today, we have the capabilities and technologies to build modular, and integrated, product and value chains that are responsive in real time. The components for this have long been available and are ready for widespread implementation. The following six factors are the catalysts for change:

1. New Paradigm for Factory Continuity

Globalization has both amplified and limited business opportunities. It has led to pushing cost optimization and production efficiencies to the limit, resulting in a high dependency on local production hubs with only a few manufacturers of essential parts. In the current crisis, this has severe consequences, i.e. 90% of antibiotics and medical protective equipment were produced in China. Going forward we must optimize sourcing strategies across the entire global supplier pool with full transparency over value flows in real-time, as well as, challenging current dependencies to improve resilience of the supply chain.

2. Fully connected systems

Industries are moving from automated production to virtual collaboration and data-driven targeting of the next big levers that impact Production Efficiency. Without fully connected systems, this might seem like a herculean task. But ultra-modern 5G campus networks make it possible. We will be able to integrate data across different systems, from production planning, suppliers, scheduling, dispatching, to reporting/analytics creating more flexibility and opportunity for production optimization.

3. Quick reaction time

Only a flexible, scalable infrastructure is a solid basis for innovation and service drivers. Over the last two years, sensors in production processes, data-aggregation and orchestration, digital twins and data-driven feedback loops have become a reality. It is now a question of who will scale these capabilities, and how fast.

4. Complexity as a competitive advantage

New technologies like autonomous driving, blockchain and artificial intelligence will help us cope with complexity but will also raise expectations. The right level of complexity can turn out to be a competitive advantage if you design the production system right.

5. Human machine interaction

A consistent simplification of all interfaces, whether for programming, commissioning, operation, analysis or service, will enable a broad group of employees to use intelligent production technologies and adapt them to specific requirements. Technical assistance systems such as Cobots, Augmented and Virtual Reality are growing and are being used by workers on the factory floor. They support human work and unleash the full potential of new working methods and applications.

6. Co-creation and partnership

We do not have to reinvent everything to design a factory of the future. With co-creation and integration, we prioritize the areas of greatest systemic impact. Today, partnering with customers, suppliers, authorities, and strategic partners, we craft joint futures that accelerate adoption of above solutions and speed to value.

Scenarios in which above six factors have been leveraged in the factory floors are growing. Today’s environment calls for accelerated digital transformation of all types, but perhaps nowhere more significant than manufacturing and supply chains. This transformation requires a systems approach to ensure effectiveness and return on investment. To envision the pragmatic steps, T-Systems has created a digital experience of how the portfolio and partnerships come together to accelerate digital now and create the factories of the future. If you want to learn more, and envision your future, today … go to: https://future-factory.t-systems.net/#Campus