INDUSTRY 4.0: RETHINKING MANUFACTURING WITH DIGITAL FACTORIES & CONNECTED DATA

What Is a Digital Factory?

A digital factory is a shared virtual model of key factory characteristics—such as geometry, behavior, and performance—that displays the convergence of all digital networks in the facility and its operation. This digital representation compiles data from the structure, systems, assets, and processes. This gives the owner insights into how to design, build, and manage the facility; how to reconfigure it; and how to maximize the efficiency and productivity of every asset. This silo-free ecosystem enables real-time collaboration, smarter decision making, and better outcomes.

Common goals and reasons for creating a digital factory include:

Making better products

Attracting more customers

Improving operational efficiency and sustainability

Increasing innovation

Speeding up time to market

Gaining actionable insights

Digital factories are intuitive ecosystems powered by data and enhanced by human ingenuity. They can adapt to volatility and are resilient in the face of disruption.

5 Benefits of a Digital Factory

1. Faster Time to Market

In manufacturing, companies are often focused on the product lifecycle—but there’s a factory lifecycle, too. To maximize productivity, the environment where the manufacturing happens must be optimized. And that’s the whole purpose of digitalization. Thanks to automation and a connected ecosystem, information moves faster in a digital factory than in traditional manufacturing. Manufacturers can leverage insights for a faster design and engineering process, iterate solutions, and make rapid decisions. The World Economic Forum found that the most digitally advanced manufacturing companies increase their speed to market by as much as 89%.

2. Flexible Manufacturing for Greater Agility

As the COVID-19 pandemic has proven, stability is never guaranteed. Supply chains ruptured and have yet to fully recover. But with a digital factory, companies are more agile, able to react to whatever is happening in the economy and the world.

Digital factories enable flexible manufacturing. With smart machines, companies are more resourceful and can quickly find alternative solutions to change course, make modifications, or adapt to new scenarios. If manufacturers can’t get a part due to supply-chain problems, they can make it in-house or connect with another manufacturer. With this flexible model, companies can create solutions that lead to new revenue streams, more innovation, and limited disruptions.

3. Customization for Changing Demands

Earlier this year, manufacturing experienced a surge in demand, reaching a 37-year high in activity. In fact, manufacturing is on track to surpass pre-pandemic production levels. But it’s not just demand that’s evolving; what consumers want is changing, too. Mass customization is rapidly becoming a must-have capability for manufacturers. Consumers will pay more for products they can put their personal stamp on.

With a digital factory, manufacturers can meet this growing demand for customized products using small-batch runs or adding features to an existing offering.

?4. Achieving Sustainability and Business Goals

Manufacturing might create the goods consumers want and need, but there are environmental costs to creating those products. Manufacturing generates 20% of global emissions and is responsible for 54% of the world’s energy consumption.

A digital factory facilitates more sustainable operations through technology:

Digital twins generate real-time actionable insights so owners can make more sustainable choices.

Generative design allows engineers to find environmentally friendly options (like raw materials) in the design and build of their digital factory and surrounding infrastructure.

Automated systems and AI track energy usage data (like heat) based on human behavior within a space. For companies with net-zero goals, a digital factory is the way forward.

5. Boost Operational Efficiency

Transportation, Inventory, Motion-Waiting, Overproduction, Overprocessing and Defects are often associated with manufacturing.

Digital factories support lean operations by eliminating redundant behaviors, consolidating workflows, and automating processes. This all contributes to lower costs and increases time employees can spend on value-adding work.

The ultimate vision of a digital factory has everything and everyone integrated—shop floor, building, infrastructure, suppliers, vendors, and stakeholders—creating a connected data flow. This allows you to automate, predict, and create a certain intelligence that maximizes efficiency across the entire operation. With a digital factory, owners can simulate alternatives to find more efficient ways of achieving goals, like Porsche did when it replaced the traditional conveyor belt for a free-wheeling autonomous vehicle that customizes production, eliminating unnecessary steps by going only to the stations it needs for each car.