Industries
Manufacturing
Manufacturing, production and other industrial organisations are going through a digital revolution.
Industry 4.0 - the fourth industrial revolution - is the convergence of the physical and digital worlds to deliver a step-change to industrial organisations ability to robustly adapt, optimise and continuously improve their processes in real-time.
Why is technology so important to manufacturing?
The manufacturing industry is facing extreme supply chain, sustainability, energy and skills challenges. By harnessing the power of technology those risks can be alleviated, allowing efficiency savings and most importantly sustained growth.
What are the problems manufacturers are facing?
Sustainability
Most manufacturers are facing some form of sustainability issue, whether it be energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, materials availability and use or environmental impact levels.
All of these issues add cost and complexity to the management and execution of manufacturing processes, with the end result being less efficient systems or reduced profit margins.
Down-time
Planning and scheduling is business critical within manufacturing, and if done correctly can directly support greater and more consistent profitability.
Production forecasting can be applied in many different contexts; anything from slowing processes down or saving energy during quieter periods to optimally timing machine maintenance and repair activities.
Data
Everything on the manufacturing floor produces data, but how do you quantify what is good data and bad data to collect? How can it be collected? How can it be used to drive better operations?
The value of good data in the manufacturing world is enormous in enabling real step-changes in performance throughout your organisation. However to get to this point requires knowledge of how the vast pools of data interact with each other, and identifying which pieces are the most important.
How can technology help remove these barriers?
Technology
Waste Elimination
By investing in technology real time efficiencies can be achieved by identifying non-value adding processes, improving how we use raw materials, providing more efficient shipping and distribution.
Insights
Predictive Maintenance
Through edge monitoring technology we can make maintenance more systematic. Assets can be regularly monitored and maintained through a blend of hardware and sensors, ensuring that machines only receive downtime when it's business critical to do so, but can be planned in advance to meet the organisation's needs.
Data
Big Data
Data should be used to drive continuous improvement throughout the organisation, by centralising data, important causal relationships between different data sets can be extracted and give true insight to assist with operational change. Once data is used in this way true digital transformation can take place.
Tom Helliwell
Senior Consultant
Our strategic and technological expertise can transform your organisation’s productivity, efficiency and provide valuable insights into processes and operations using digital manufacturing technologies.
