With an influx of investment in digital factories, the playing field is changing and the ROI for digitizing production is becoming ever more apparent. However, restraints, such as company size and a disconnect between IT and OT, means the road to a successful digital transformation is one very few will be able to do alone.
The National Institute for Metalworking Skills (NIMS) and the Oregon Manufacturing Innovation Center – Research & Development (OMIC R&D) have united to define a set of Metrology standards and to develop a Metrology certification process.
Software AG (Frankfurt, MDAX: SOW) announced an original survey of over 125 North American manufacturers in the heavy industry and automotive sectors that revealed they are unable to scale their Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) investments across their enterprises, and therefore are losing millions of dollars in potential profits while falling behind competitors that have invested in enabling technologies that support IIoT across the enterprise.
There is an ever-increasing demand for the individualization of products from today’s consumer. When consumers are able to get exactly what they want (shape, size, color) they are more satisfied and more likely to do repeat business. But how do you scale custom part production?
The Pittsburgh region is a hotbed of activity in robotics and AI. This activity includes research and technology companies that commercialize academic research and solve real world problems.
Amid vigorous growth in their industry, product lifecycle management (PLM) software developers are exploiting the cloud and machine learning to manage data and enhance the users’ experience.
More and more manufacturers are seeing productivity as a crucial factor to their business success. In the meantime, business models are changing from the large quantities and few variants to small quantities with frequently changed variants. This change requires high flexibility during production.
Road to maturity involves safeguarding supply chains, treating security with the same urgency as safety, for starters.
Blockchain technology is becoming a key player in modernizing supply chains to enable easy tracking, automate transactions and delivery, and build end-to-end trust, Chandra Narayanaswami, principal research staff member, Member IBM Academy of Technology at IBM Research, told people attending a smart manufacturing session at the MD&M West conference here last week.
So you have finally decided to start your digital transformation. You have seen the benefits around digitizing your operations. By connecting your disparate systems, you can start seeing what is actually happening in your plant and become more efficient. And not just in one plant, but in multiple plants.