The Future of Manufacturing With Digital Transformation Is Here!

We are constantly hearing about how COVID-19 has thrust digital transformation years ahead in just a few months, but IDC has now quantified the truism with their Worldwide Digital Transformation Spending Guide. It forecasts that the global spending on digital transformation (DX) will touch the $6.8 trillion mark by 2023 and that 65% of the world’s GDP will get digitized by 2022.

Amid this pandemic, we can divide the manufacturers into two camps: those burying their heads in the sand, waiting for the return of the status quo, and those that are investing in digital transformation to explore newopportunities. The status quo is never coming back. So, which side are you on?

Digital Transformation in Manufacturing

Digital transformation in the manufacturing field is widely considered to mean the adoption of digital technology for replacing or automating the manual processes–switching the old for the new. But that’s a pretty short-sighted view.

More than just digitizing and optimizing the existing systems, the benefits of digital transformation in manufacturing should redefine strategy, create new benefits, and future-proof the processes for a new normal.

We are living through what Klaus Schwab, executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, has called the Fourth Industrial Revolution–a transition away from the global economy powered by machines towards a world “characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds.”

Manufacturers failing to adopt the key Industry 4.0 technologies suffer from a huge risk of falling behind the advancing pack of agile “smart factories”–fully connected systems, fuelled by the continuous data streams that learn and adapt to new demands with their emergence.

3 Technologies Governing Digital Transformation Here

Big Data and IIoT

As digitalization enlarges the global data sphere, the power of big data (data sets so large that they exceed the capacity of conventional processing methods) when combined with machine learning (computer algorithms that improve automatically through experience) increases at a rapid pace.

Manufacturers with their big data capabilities are making huge leaps across a wide range of dimensions: everything from the product quality, efficiency in production, energy management, supply chain management, and safety too. Sensors inside the production equipment, instruments, and other devices, connected in a cyber-physical network called the Industrial Internet of Things, provide real-time‘condition monitoring,’ improving the machine lifespan, reducing the downtime, and forecasting defects even before they occur.

From a totally commercial perspective, manufacturers can use big data to reveal the patterns and trends in the market, predict the customer behavior, and even personalize buyer journeys to maximize the conversion rate and their retention. They can automatically update their prices to account for changing market conditions (dynamic pricing), ensuring that they retain their agility and competitiveness while also ring fencing the target margins.

More than 59 zettabytes (ZB) of data will be created, captured, copied, and then consumed globally this year (2020.) More data will also be created over the next three years than over the past 30! Big data capabilities will soon become the governing power in manufacturing, but it’s not too late to jump aboard the big data wagon.

Additive Manufacturing or 3D Printing

Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing as it’s more widely known, is a CAD-controlled process of printing the 3D objects by depositing and joining multiple different materials in layers, anything from plastics to titanium and steel.

Advantages for the manufacturers include cheap, rapid prototyping, less wastage, lower stock on hand requirements, simple recreation of legacy parts, and, most importantly the ability to leverage AI-driven generative design (an iterative product design process carried out by a machine, which is super interesting.)

With additive manufacturing, a custom cell phone case can also be printed at home, on a cheap 3D printer and in less than 20 minutes. Meanwhile, the Strati–the world’s first 3D printed car–can be printed on more advanced machines in just about 24 hours.

While that might sound fast, it’s actually not. The stamping, welding, painting, assembly, and inspections involved in the manufacturing of your average Toyota takes just about 18 hours–six hours less than the Strati. A basic phone case can be the injection molded in under 30 seconds! Why therefore, is additive manufacturing so crucial to the digital transformation in the manufacturing industry?

It’s all about the differential costs between different batches. Traditional manufacturers need to produce thousands of units for profitability. Additive manufacturers can produce just one. As additive manufacturing becomes cheaper, it tears down barriers to the entry, transforming entire supply chains from global to local, and also making mass customization commercially viable for the first time.
3. Industrial Augmented Reality

Most of us have heard of augmented reality (AR). We may have even

experimented with Google’s various AR features in different apps like Google Lens or Google Maps. The technology isn’t new. It dates back to 1990 with the work of Thomas Caudell and David Mizell*. But it’s still in infancy, given the manufacturing use cases coming down the pipeline.

An AR system brings digital content by giving the users a “composite view”–a combination of a real-world scene as viewed by the human eye and virtual scenes as generated by a computer. Manufacturers use AR (or “Industrial AR”) for diverse tasks such as the assembly guidance, maintenance and repair; quality control; and training. When combined with advanced robotics and virtual reality (VR), most of them can be carried out remotely through a mobile device.

AR is just as powerful when used by manufacturers like a sales tool. Demand for personalization is increasing, and manufacturers now seek different ways to allow non-technical sales reps (and even self-serving end-customers) in configuring complex, customizable goods without the needed knowledge and skills to pull it off.
With AR visual product configurators (a feature of some visual CPQ solutions), sales reps can assemble their products in a highly intuitive simulated reality. Advanced product and pricing rules built in the software ensure that every configuration is error-free and technically feasible. It’s a highly immersive buying experience, responsible to boost the average conversion rates by 40%.

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*Caudell and Mizell, working for Boeing in the early 90s, were asked to design a replacement for large plywood boards that displayed the wiring instructions for the various aircraft assemblies. So they devised a head-mounted display that superimposed different sets of wiring instructions onto the real world. They only managed to make the instructions appear on bare, reusable plywood boards. But still, less plywood!

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GE Healthcare- A Manufacturer Doing Digital Transformation Perfectly

GE Healthcare is a leading global medical technology and digital solutions

innovator and a prime company example at the front of digital transformation in the manufacturing industry. As Jon Zimmerman, Vice President and General Manager at GE Healthcare, puts it: “We speak, eat, and breathe digital.” The company’s entire business process is linked by what they call the “Digitial Thread”–a seamless data flow that governs automation, gathers the information, and also provides data-driven insights.
GE digital transformation looks to digitize healthcare through supplying healthcare providers with multiple digital solutions. These include their intelligence platform, Edison, which improves efficiency, patient outcomes, and an access to care through its 50+ Edison apps. Their Industrial Internet of Things platform, Predix, provides out-of-the-box condition monitoring through asset connectivity, edge-to-cloud data processing, and also a feature-rich user console.