Smart Manufacturing Ecosystem for Accelerated Business Growth

The manufacturing sector will go through a huge change in the coming years. With the continuous interference in technology and the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution, this manufacturing sector is ready to bounce to the next level. Given these quick changes the requirements of this sector will also vary radically. The manufacturing sector has observed some remarkable evolutions over the time. One such important evolution taking place right now is Smart Manufacturing Ecosystem.

This concept has slowly slide in due to an expansion of innovative technologies, smart devices and smart processes. Of course the purpose of the industry is simple – it should accelerate the growth in the top line of the business and also ensure that this growth is to be expected and acceptable.

The IoT in manufacturing market, size is predicted to grow from USD 12.67 billion in 2017 to USD 45.30 billion by 2022 at a composite annual growth rate of 29.0% during the divine period of 2017–2022.

IoT manufacturing market size

With rapidly increasing market size to fulfill customer expectations is no longer just a priority concern for consumer-facing industries. Now days, B2B customers are challenging more than ever and their requests are just complex and unpredictable. Customers are looking to suppliers for greater personalization, more repeated product launches and enhanced customer experiences. And today’s manufacturers are competing to maintain this.

Here is why the future of manufacturing will be relied upon manufacturers’ capability to assign the workload. Manufacturers must answer to the needs of high-demanding customers by building flexible “ecosystems” that hold strategic partners and digital technologies to design a cohesive network of services and ideas. Through manufacturing ecosystems, contractors and partners can play a vital role in innovation, distribution and production that increasing efficiencies and optimizing product and service levels from start to finish.

As per Accenture Strategy study report, manufacturers that use a huge percentage of third parties are more likely to have greater productivity, revenue, and margin than those that try to build and own the entire network.

Research also disclosed that, while more than half of global manufacturers do plan to enhance their use of third parties many of them are using to solve short-term concerns rather than to generate long-term benefits.

The future of manufacturing is ecosystem-handled. Now it’s time for manufacturers to start thinking about how to use existing partners in isolated ways, introduce new partners with new capacities and introduce new concepts to solve hard processes. Here’s how:

Old Partners in New Roles

  • Try engaging your go-to partners for different services outside the norm likewise product design or redesign services, product management, direct order consignment to customers and packaging.
  • Use third- and fourth-party logistics providers for location flexibility, last-mile distribution for logistics and customer information services for status and tracking.
  • Take benefit of rescheduling centers in order to customize or finalize products. They can be helpful for packaging products late in the order cycle to complete specific customer requirements.

New Players with New Capabilities

  • Work with third-party product and manufacturing design services to strategically supplement your own abilities. Manufacturers can utilize them for rapid innovation cycles than they can achieve in-house or in a design capability for products undertaking corrections.
  • Prefer third-party labor. Third-party provides services from basic to full operative control in manufacturing functions such as quality, safety, engineering and maintenance.

New Concepts and New Directions

  • Use maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) centers for usual parts or assets within an industry.
  • Connect the digital marketplace. Manufacturers are now capable to obtain digital representations of products through appearing digital marketplaces. Once designs are done, products can be manufactured in-house through a contract manufacturer or through an ad-hoc 3D printing service.

Once manufacturers have recognized the right partners and figure out the new roles they will play, manufactures can then deploy evolving digital technologies to increase cooperation and flexibility within the ecosystem.

Evolution of Smart Eco:

The S L Kirloskar Center for executive education introduced together the creators and Industry and academia to discuss and design an innovation ecosystem for the Manufacturing Industry in order to build globally competitive manufacturing abilities and quickly change itself to carry accelerated growth. This advantage connects Suppliers, original equipment manufacturers and experts, mentors, consultants to each other and they have huge opportunity to initiate further.

The strong faith is that by the sensible and business-focused assumption of the cutting edge smart technologies will help the businesses to achieve this aim. We can bounce back and engage with the world’s best by developing the appropriate transformation strategy and quickly acquiring the next generation Smart Manufacturing Business Transformation Models.

Smart Eco is India’s first Smart Manufacturing eco system that will help small and medium scale manufacturing organizations quickly change to deliver accelerated, predictable and sustainable revenue growth. It is the unique platform for collective networked-unbounded -industry and business engagement ecosystem.  

Understanding the information value loop and Industry 4.0

The Industrial IoT manufacturing ecosystem runs on data, which runs through a continuous cycle of interaction which is called as the Information Value Loop.

Manufacturing is the process of information creation, communication and action. While its outcome is a physical object, manufacturing automatically starts with information: A design is produced via drawing, design software or the examining of a physical object, creating data. 

Sensors will examine an assembly line and its equipment to notice and create data, communicated via network and then subjected to set standards that will combine the data into meaningful information.

This information is then subjected to augmented intelligence that is used to analyze and determine the appropriate response (action). The action is then sent back through the network to the equipment and the directed action is taken.

These data are then interacted with the machines that implement the design, conducting it forth from the digital to the physical area. Ideally, data that generated from the process of creation is further represent. It is the jump from digital back to physical from connected, digital technologies to the creation of a physical object that includes the reality of the Industry 4.0 concept.

The Information Value Loop is what maintains the manufacturing and distribution systems connected and operating. Without Information value loop, manufacturing systems are only a group of components and not an ecosystem. It’s about the capability to send and receive data in real-time enabling manufacturers to be dynamic instead of reactive.

It is the whole and complete visibility into all aspects of manufacturing and distribution systems. This visibility helps to allow systems to run as systematically and successfully as possible.

The IoT is the most essential element of industry 4.0. The IoT concept has received grip in recent years as the importance of connectivity both in creating products and services and increasing satisfaction among users and client. 

Currently, a hold of connected technologies is growing quickly, including high-quality sensors, more flexible and powerful networks, robotics, artificial intelligence and cognitive technologies and increased reality. Taken together, these technologies can change manufacturing ecosystem in various ways.

IoT information value loop

Growing the business: Applying Industrial IoT to build revenue

On other side of manufacturing value chain, Industrial IoT technologies can enable business growth. In the R& D and designing and various support stages, various physical-to-digital, only digital and digital-to-physical connections can alter engineering, user interaction and even the IoT Products themselves.

Products in the era of Industry 4.0 run the technological scope. The utilization of Internet Technology likewise sensors and wearable’s and Operational Technology such as advanced manufacturing in the form of additive manufacturing and robotics can enable product improvements in different ways.

Manufacturers are already using modern OT likewise additive manufacturing and advanced IT in the form of embedded sensors and scanning to design new products and enhance the performance of a old legacy and delivering new levels of value to customers, along with new data products. The all above mentioned pointers will build revenue to a extreme level.

Industry 4.0 is already here and before even we notice, it’s going to be the standard in the manufacturing industry. Digital transformations are happening at fast speed.

At hIOTron, we help users design their Industry 4.0 strategy and make it a reality in realizing clear business benefits by IoT Course guide.