Three Steps Toward Manufacturing Resiliency

The manufacturing business environment can be unpredictable. Supply chain disruptions occur, demand for products fluctuates, and game-changing innovations quickly appear on the horizon. To stay in business and remain competitive, manufacturers must anticipate and respond to both foreseen and unforeseen changes.
What’s the key to this responsiveness? Manufacturing resiliency. And the driver behind this resiliency is data-driven production execution supported by digital technologies.
Hard Lessons
Hard lessons have been learned in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Manufacturing has been particularly hard hit. Companies that were able to react quickly, retool their factories, redirect their supply chains, and take advantage of digital technologies quickly switched gears to meet crucial needs and create new opportunities

For example, clothing designers and manufacturers such as H&M, Brooks Brothers, and Hanesbrands retooled their factories to produce face masks, medical gowns, and protective aprons for hospitals. Spirits manufacturers Bacardi and Brown-Forman shifted their distillery operations to manufacture hand sanitizers for first responders. And production lines at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Ford, and GM are now turning out ventilator parts, respirators, and other much-needed medical equipment.[i] In addition to meeting urgent worldwide needs, these companies have created a culture of resiliency in their operations that will be valuable to them and the communities they support in both the short and long term.
Three Steps to Resilient Manufacturing 
By taking the following three steps, you can transform your manufacturing environment to become more resilient and improve operations. You can more effectively meet the needs of your customers under any circumstances while creating new opportunities for your business.
1/ Increase flexible automation to create resilient operations.
The manufacturing industry has come full circle, from the days of hyper-customized craft production before the first Industrial Age, through mass production in the early 1900s, to manufacturing as it is today. With the trend toward personalization that we’re now seeing in the marketplace, the manufacturing industry is moving back to hyper-customization, or a lot size of one.
However, in this Industry 4.0 iteration, hyper-personalization is being done at scale. Flexible automation is at the forefront of this evolving story. Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are the key technologies that make flexible automation at scale possible, enabled by 5G, Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) and Open Platform Communications (OPC).

On the road to full automation, we can also expect to see more scenarios where humans work collaboratively with robots. This collaboration could take many forms. For example, workers could adapt their tasks to preconfigured robotic operations. However, with rapid advancements in robotics and AI, future production lines could also be staffed with robots that have the intelligence and situational awareness to easily work alongside humans, adjusting their behavior according to each worker’s style and speed.
The technologies that will drive this digital transformation include robotics and mixed reality, with 5G, IoT and AI serving as the digital backbone and application enablers.
2/ Introduce remote operations to ensure business continuity in adverse situations. 
Prior to the pandemic, there was a lot of industry buzz and some solid proof points for deploying augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) in manufacturing, particularly within the maintenance function. However, not everyone believed this technology would be quickly and widely adopted.
Now, as companies have been forced into embracing remote working, we’re seeing a renewed enthusiasm among executives for these technologies. There’s a heightened urgency to incorporate remote operations as an integral means of supporting manufacturing operations, whether for product quality inspection, equipment maintenance tasks, or even collaborative tasks involving product design and production planning.
Technologies that can be seamlessly integrated into work environments will quickly evolve to include key enablers such as digital twins, 3D visualization, and private 5G.
3/ Adopt a digital infrastructure that connects all parts of the supply chain. 
One of the serious manufacturing-related impacts of the pandemic and subsequent shutdowns was the significant disruption to the supply chain. Many enterprises were scrambling to source needed materials and components, and distributors were scrambling to deliver them. This situation brought home how essential digital technologies are for managing the complexity and variability of today’s sophisticated and vulnerable manufacturing supply chains.
Industrial data lakes play a key role in transforming traditional production software stacks into digital production platforms. In the manufacturing environment, data lakes enable real-time connectivity to various information layers involved in manufacturing operations, from programmable logic controllers (PLCs), to manufacturing execution systems (MES), to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. This end-to-end connectivity will enable a seamless information flow across the entire supply chain. In addition, it will help scale any application deployed in one plant, to any other plant anywhere in the world, improving overall return on investment (ROI).
Together, with several other emerging technologies, industrial data lakes will eventually help shape the vision of distributed manufacturing and personalized manufacturing. Additionally, industrial data lakes will play a critical role in scaling digitized accumulated know-how as we transition toward the vision of the digital worker.
Lessons Learned 
Though the manufacturing industry doesn’t always operate in crisis mode, there are valuable lessons about resiliency to be learned from the pandemic. Any manufacturer can take these lessons to heart and transform their factory into an agile, responsive environment resilient enough to weather whatever changes may come.

[i] https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2020/companies-retooling-operations-covid-19/88921

GM: Data’s Infinite Potential

Posted by Paul Tate | Oct 29, 2020 | Ideas & Insights, 2020 Virtual Rethink MLC Summit

With a vast global network of production facilities ranging anywhere from 25 to over 100 years old, and a production staff of over 140,000 people around the world, General Motors generates massive amounts of data every day.
As the cars it produces become ever more intelligent, and as new production technologies like dedicated additive manufacturing systems in all its factories, new developments in collaborative robotics on the shop floor, and specialized new metal forming innovations underway, those data volumes are growing fast.
So how does GM view the potential of all this data for the kind of products it makes and how it will make them in the years ahead?
“It’s infinite,” predicted GM’s Executive Vice President of Global Manufacturing, Gerald Johnson, in conversation with MLC Co-founder David R. Brousell during the opening keynote session of the 2020 Virtual MLC Rethink Summit this week.
As the recent winner of the MLC’s 2020 Manufacturing Leader of the Year Award, Johnson was talking about GM’s Manufacturing Vision and its own journey to Manufacturing 4.0.

“There’s no real destination to our smart manufacturing journey,” continued Johnson, “because the technology keeps growing. It’s really about grabbing and integrating what allows us to move forward from where we are today, and then looking out as we start strategizing and planning our future to make sure we are always able to incorporate what’s available to us.”
Understanding and using data more effectively is a key part of that journey. “I think the technology will help people make better decisions and help make decisions faster,” he added. “We will be able to do things better in a digital world, shrinking the time it takes to go from idea to execution, and shrinking the time it takes to move from equipment on the floor to full operation.
“It’s about understanding how much we can put into the digital world with enough accuracy that it allows us to predict better, allows us to prevent better, and allows us to move from an idea to a tangible, physical asset in a highly efficient execution faster. That’s where I think the greatest opportunity is.”
To help drive this digital ambition, GM has a rapidly expanding data analytics organization where analysts spend significant amounts of time on GM’s plant floors asking front line management and operators exactly what problems they are trying to solve. “Then they are coming back to us and saying, ‘I think we can help you with this by aggregating these sets of data’. So, it’s a marriage of the experts who understand data techniques, and the plant guys who understand the problem. Then they are collaborating together in workshops to find new ways that data can help to solve things,” he said.
But for Johnson, that’s only the beginning of harnessing the potential of all the data that GM is now collecting. “The reason I say it is infinite is because I don’t know the question that I will need to ask a year from now, or five years from now. But if I have an infinite data set, when I get to the right question, I don’t have to create all the connectivity and create all the data gathering we need. All I have to do is to find the right tools to extract that data in very intelligent ways.
“So, it’s infinite”, he concluded. “There’s millions of bits of data that we are now collecting every day that I don’t even know I need yet. But I’m grateful to IT team for finding efficient ways for us to keep it, so when I figure out the question I want to ask, it’s there so we can start manipulating it to answer questions that we aren’t smart enough to know we need to answer yet. To me, that’s exciting.”
“It’s like looking up into the universe and trying to count the stars,” he explained. “You can’t. But it’s amazing that it’s out there.

The manufacturing sector faces a slew of challenges due to the pandemic. A recent survey by the U.S. National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) found that nearly four out of five manufacturing companies expect a financial hit from COVID-19. More than half (53.1%) anticipate a change in operations primarily due to the injection of new technologies and reimagined business processes.
Writing for Forbes magazine, Anna-Katrina Shedletsky, CEO of Instrumental, said: “Between solutions that leverage the power of the cloud for visibility and automation that optimizes work, necessity will drive invention: manufacturers will do five years of innovation in the next 18 months.”
Indeed, the cloud will be a staple for every manufacturer’s technology stack in these challenging times. Even before the pandemic, the cloud was poised to bring undeniable benefits for manufacturers. It includes a 22% rise in profitability and a 23% decrease in operational costs, on average. And spurred by the pandemic, manufacturers are likely to ramp up their investments in the cloud. In IDC’s wave 3 of its COVID-19 Impact on IT Spending Survey, analysts predicted, “a significant increase in demand for cloud software”.
Five Drivers of Change
There are five clear drivers for this trend. Across industries, the demand for cloud infrastructure has seen a sharp uptick, growing a record 34% YoY in Q1 of 2020. This surge is because the cloud dramatically shrinks their dependence on physical, on-premise infrastructure, and consequently, physical proximity. This facet has immediate benefits for companies that are following social distancing measures. In the long-term, the cloud could unlock better connectivity and more seamless supply chains, overcoming supply chain disruptions arising from COVID-19 as expected by 35.5% of companies in the IDC survey.
These benefits span short, near, and long-term impact areas for manufacturers:

1. In the short-term, the cloud enables business continuity. 

Several of the critical activities on the manufacturing value chain, from product design to marketing and customer service, rely on in-person contact. The cloud eliminates this dependence by providing an “anytime, anywhere” platform for communication. This has immense implications for new product development (NPD) as companies no longer need to press pause on innovation. Still, they can stick to their planned go-to-market (GTM) strategies by leveraging the cloud. Similarly, on the operational side, the cloud can help maintain business continuity across people processes, production, and even marketing/sales via online platforms.

2. The cloud simplifies compliance with EHS regulations

Employee health and safety (EHS) regulations are a key focus area for manufacturers even in the best of times. With the onset of the pandemic, this demands even more attention for manufacturing companies. Business continuity and growth cannot compromise on employee health in any way. The cloud allows manufacturers to operate near-lights-out production, assembly, and shipping, thanks to cloud-based automation. Employees can work from the safety of their homes, cementing their trust in the employer and strengthening long-term relationships.

3. In the near-term, the cloud extends the manufacturing ecosystem

The pandemic has compelled business leaders to rethink their existing procurement and distribution networks, lying stress on localized availability and supply chains. When it comes to global pathways, the cloud helps to overcome curbs on international travel and stay connected. It is possible to monitor and manage this entire landscape on a cloud-based platform from the safety of one’s home. The convergence of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) via cloud-solutions makes it easier to orchestrate the manufacturing ecosystem remotely.

4. In the long-term, the cloud will accelerate process modernization

Business leaders were discussing the importance of the fourth industrial revolution even before the pandemic. Now, it is no longer a mere possibility. COVID-19 has pushed manufacturers to reduce dependence on hands-on processes, physical infrastructure, and physical workspaces. A modernized manufacturing enterprise, where cloud-based artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI and ML) scans EHS data to spot non-compliance; where a cloud-based contact center replaces hundreds of employees working within a confined campus; and where cloud-based project management platforms ensure on-time delivery, will soon be the new normal.

5. Cost optimization is a recurring benefit of migrating to the cloud

It’s no secret that traditional, on-premise infrastructure is prone to severe inefficiencies. Companies cannot dynamically allocate resources, leading to resource waste and challenges in scaling up at peak demand periods. The cloud could help manufacturers improve their bottom line by maximizing technology investments. It could also drive topline revenues by enabling innovation and business growth when the competition stutters.
Beyond the Pandemic
Enterprise migration to the cloud shouldn’t be reactive. After all, it has far-reaching benefits extending well into a manufacturer’s long-term roadmap. It will help business leaders get a step ahead of the competition, leapfrogging into the industry 4.0 era, and ready to take on fresh opportunities post-COVID-19. This requires well-articulated cloud adoption strategies encompassing every sphere of business, starting today.