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Multiple ML award winner AB InBev is harnessing the power of technology to create a future with more cheers, says Global VP Marcelo Ribeiro.    

“Manufacturing needs to create an ecosystem for the future where we can all learn from each other.”

Marcelo Ribeiro, Global Vice President, Engineering and Operations, AB InBev.

Anheuser Busch InBev (AB InBev), the world’s leading brewer, swept the boards at the recent 2022 Manufacturing Leadership Awards Gala with three individual Project awards, three High Achiever awards, and the ultimate accolade of the 2022 Manufacturer of the Year-Large Enterprise award.

AB InBev was formed in 2008 by the merger of Belgian/Brazilian brewing company InBev and US-based Anheuser-Busch, later adding South African company SABMiller in 2016. It now produces around 500+ local beer brands available worldwide, with revenues of more than $54 billion in 2021, and is supported by 169,000 employees in over 50 countries.

In our latest Dialogue with a manufacturing industry thought leader, AB InBev’s Global Vice President of Engineering and Operations, Marcelo Ribeiro, talks to Manufacturing Leadership Council Executive Editor Paul Tate about harnessing advanced digital tools to empower front line teams, making data accessible to help solve key business problems and drive new ideas, and creating an industrial ecosystem to drive resiliency and sustainability in the years ahead.

Q: What’s the scope of your role as Global Vice President at AB InBev?

A: It’s really a dual role. One is to define our strategy, including Manufacturing 4.0 priorities, in both operations and engineering so we have a unified approach across all our regions – from glass bottles and cans, to labels, malt, and beers. The other is to identify best practices and what works best, and then to make sure that we incorporate those best practices into the overall management system with ensuring they are successfully shared across all our markets.

“Our goal is to bring all of our operations to a level of world class performance and achieve operational excellence by addressing both the challenges of today, and to prepare ourselves for the future.”

Our goal is to bring all of our operations to a level of world class performance and achieve operational excellence by addressing both the challenges of today, and to prepare ourselves for the future. And that future is coming at us more rapidly than it used to, so we need to harness the potential of those new 4.0 technologies through continuous improvement and try to bring that future into the present. The key focus there is to ensure we have the skills and the empowered autonomous front-line teams to do that, because it’s those front-line teams who will ultimately drive the success of the company into the future with sustainable and reliable operations.

Q: What are the key trends driving AB InBev’s business transformation today?

A: We have a dream at ABI which is “to create a future with more cheers”. Within that dream we have a clear strategy to lead and grow the category, to digitize and monetize our ecosystem, and to optimize our business. This means we are developing and delivering products that reach consumers on more occasions. That requires flexibility, and not only operational excellence, but also innovative thinking to develop new products at the pace that consumers want. So, we are digitizing our sales more and more – today, 55% of our revenues are now made through digital platforms. We have built quite a considerable amount of data about changing consumer behavior and preferences and the varieties of products people want so we are using those insights to prepare our supply chain to deliver on those changing needs.

The COVID-19 is an example of a very rapid mix of changes. On-premise outlets, like restaurants and bars, were closed and consumption moved to the home, which required very different approaches to packaging and delivery. E-commerce became much more prevalent as well, so we had to make sure the supply chain could adapt quickly and find new ways of increasing capacity without compromising safety, quality, and sustainability for the company.

So today, as we continue to optimize the business and focus more on organic growth, we have learned a lot about optimizing the interjection point between superior operational performance and leveraging digital transformation. In many ways, it’s the consumer that drives that transformation because the supply chain and operations need new tools and solutions to be able to adapt quickly and be prepared to fulfil that changing demand.

Q: What does winning these prestigious 2022 Manufacturing Leadership Awards mean to you and AB InBev?

A: It is huge. We are very honored and proud of all the people who contributed to these award-winning projects. These tools are now in use in all of our operating markets. It’s an important recognition of all the teams involved and their hard work in using technology to solve customer and consumer problems, to make our products better, our environment safer, and improve our operational performance. What we’re really interested in, of course, are the kinds of benefits we have seen in all three projects and what those benefits will be in the years to come. Their achievements are all likely to be important to the future of AB InBev. So, these awards are one more incentive for us to continue to work on transforming the business by collaborating with each other – with vendors, with suppliers, and among ourselves inside the company – to continue to drive our dream to deliver world class performance in every single operation we have.

“We have a clear strategy to lead and grow the category, to digitize and monetize our ecosystem, and to optimize our business.”

Q: Can you explain a little more about the three main projects involved?

A: The first one is in the AI and Machine Learning category. This is the SORBA project designed to reduce fuel waste in overused assets like air compressors and boilers. We wanted to incrementally improve energy consumption using real-time AI industrial optimization techniques and to develop a platform that could be shareable between breweries. We started a pilot a few years back but decided to find a partner who could develop an AI and machine learning solution that was more agnostic. We had tried several solutions but found them hard to scale with the same success from one site, to two, or three sites. So, we were looking for a platform to use with an algorithm that was more independent of the specific environment that we were working on, like the type of data we had or the installation on different machines and so on. That’s what we found with SORBA. It’s easy to use and could be tailored to the business need.

Today it is more than an individual energy solution. Initially we were focusing on steam, heat, and energy, but now the same platform is being leveraged in other parts of the business for things like quality purposes and the consumption of water. We’re also testing it for efficiency, like OEE validation. And it is already driving a massive benefit in terms of energy fluids. But we’re only just getting started as we are looking to extend it to more sites. And our teams who are using it are now coming up with new business cases because it’s easy to use and not so complex to set up the model, so we don’t have to tailor and customize a complete solution every time.

Q: The second award winning project is AODS in the Digital Networks and Connectivity Category. How is that helping the company?

A: This tool really allows us to compare our maintenance plans and activities across all of our operations. It’s a centralized downtime tracking and monitoring tool for brewing, packaging, and utilities operations and it can identify critical machines and connect equipment performance with a set of indicators to prescribe necessary actions and improve both line and performance results.

The goal is 100% reliability and optimized operations for all equipment and processes at all of our global facilities. This tool allows us to leverage the information we have in our Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), plus operational performance data that we have in other systems. Now we are we adding more operational data into the tool as well, more maintenance information, even spare parts, and so on. So, it’s becoming a great collaborative tool to help us benchmark and find best practices across our operations, especially when you have similar machines or similar conditions.

“We have defined three key aspects of digital technology that we are working on. One is the democratization of data to make sure it is easily available to the front line.”

We are now expanding this to other areas of the company and I’m confident the more data we put in, the more we can leverage the analytics to give us additional value and multiply the benefits we are seeing today.

Q: And the third project, using the ACADIA and DeepHow tools in the Operational Excellence category?

A: These are tools to help empower front-line teams. Acadia automates our SOP in a digital way, replacing paper and PDFs with a more modern experience with short videos. We combined this with the AI powered DeepHow tool which makes it much easier create and edit those videos and also has the capability to add subtitles and voice translation in multiple languages, so you can easily switch from Chinese to Portuguese, for example. This is important with multiple sites around the world and a global workforce.

What we are building here is another shareable knowledge platform across the company. It solves many problems on the training side, helps people learn faster, and accelerates the pace of sharing across the globe to accelerate our performance gains. And although it began with SOPs, we are now adding best practices and other kinds of training so every time we find a good solution, we can update the procedures. It’s a great enabler to help empower the front-line teams and improve decision making across all our production sites

Q: When you look back at these projects, what have you learned about digital transformation along the way?

A: Clearly, the technology does not define the solution. If you have a problem, then you can leverage technology to find the right solution. But it’s not about doing technology for technology’s sake and then trying to find a problem to solve. All three projects were either solving a business issue or helping us seize a business opportunity. And all of them have delivered clear tangible benefits for the company, whether it’s in financial performance or the number of people they reach. I believe the participation of the frontline teams in their development was key to making them successful. Those teams become part of the solution, identify with it, and have a strong sense of ownership. Finally, you need to have good metrics to help you know when to scale. Not everything you try to explore is going to be a success, but if you have good metrics and goals from the beginning it helps you to identify whether a pilot is a success or not, or whether you could improve the new tools more to bring more value at scale.

“We also need to be more modular, more flexible, with systems that can be more easily tailored to the needs of specific businesses so we can be more agile in the future.”

Q: These are challenging times, though. What challenges still keep you awake at night?

A: We’re not short of challenges today with today’s dynamic operating environment. The safety of our people is always our priority. Despite the challenges, we remain focused on creatively using technology to find solutions that can help us to continue to grow, to continue to invest, and to continue to drive towards world class performance. And we want to do so while advancing our sustainability goals and our purpose to create a future with more cheers.

Q: Looking ahead, what would you highlight as the greatest business challenges and opportunities for the manufacturing industry over the next five years?

A: One thing we have learned in recent years is that the future is becoming less predictable. We need to prepare for that, so we have to build a more resilient supply chain, and a more flexible supply chain. I think that’s the biggest business challenge for the industry going forward and using technology as an enabler to help solve new problems. So, we need to increase collaboration with everyone across the ecosystem – suppliers, partners, vendors, universities, associations like the MLC, and so on – to achieve that resiliency and sustainability. We used to have a very transactional relationship with vendors and suppliers and we are now changing that to be more partners, sharing more, and opening our doors.

For example, to meet our sustainability goals, and for every company’s sustainability goals, we have to look at Scope 1, 2, and 3 requirements which means the scope goes beyond out operations and across the entire supply chain. We recognise that we need to collaborate with our suppliers and distributors along that chain, to be able to meet our ambition to achieve net zero by 2040 across our value chain. We need to work together and share more good solutions. We need to use systems that talk to each other end-to-end across the supply chain, so we have more visibility on supplier operations, and we give them more visibility on our front-line operations, production planning, and so on. Manufacturing needs to create an ecosystem in the future where we can learn from each other. And we have to actually enable that to happen as becoming more resilient will require building a collaborative ecosystem.

Q: What are the priorities for your own digital strategy to meet those future challenges?

A: We have defined three key aspects of digital technology that we are working on. One is the making the data more accessible and easily available to the front line. That may sound like an easy thing, but in a large company like ours, with a very diverse footprint, with different operations and different ages of equipment, it’s not a simple thing to do. So, we need to standardize that data from anywhere in the world, whether it is coming from China or Brazil, so we can see all that information in the same way.

“All three projects were either solving a business issue or helping us seize a business opportunity.”

That will allow us to use a more modular execution system. We used to have a very monolithic system, which was hard to adapt and implement. Now we need to be more modular, more flexible, with systems that can be more easily tailored to the needs of specific businesses so we can be more agile in the future.

The third layer is advanced analytics. So, we want to be able to use all the data we have from the first level, contextualize it in a more modular execution system, then apply all the different levels of analytics tools we have, from BI to AI and machine learning to digital twins.

Those are the three aspects that we believe will help make a real difference in the future.

Q: What new leadership skills do you feel that senior industry executives now need to successfully drive that continuing digital transformation?

A: It is critical to empower the front line. Leaders should be focused on providing the resources to allow people to do the work and achieve excellence themselves. Leaders also have to be mindful of a culture of collaboration and inclusive environment that stretches both inside and outside the company. They should also have active listening and communicating skills to understand and help resolve challenges.

In the end, people are key for any business transformation. They are the ones who make the technology work, who adopt the new digital tools, and who find the right problems to address. People make or break digital transformation programs. To move from a traditional, operational approach to more people-empowered collaborative decision making we need more knowledge, more information, and we need to put that knowledge into people’s hands so they can apply it to create a better decision-making process. Today, knowledge is more important than ever. We have to have the knowledge and the skilled people who can use it to drive our transformation. Technology is also evolving very fast and nothing can be taken for granted. So, that requires new leadership skills where leaders must be able to really listen to their teams and understand the potential or limitations of different technologies so we can find the right ways to succeed with any implementation.

Q: Finally, if you had to focus on one thing as a watchword or catchphrase for the future of manufacturing, what would that be?

A: I’ll use our company purpose: “The dream big to create a future with more cheers”. When we have a more collaborative ecosystem that shares learnings and best practices, and when we have more inclusive, sustainable environments across the industry, then we really will have a brighter future for everyone, our employees, our customers, our suppliers, our shareholders, and so on. And technology plays an important role in helping us to get there.  M

FACT FILE: Anheuser-Busch InBev
HQ: Leuven, Belgium
Industry Sector: Consumer Goods
Revenues: $54.30 Billion (2021)
Net Earnings: $13.82 Billion (2021)
Employees: 169,000 Employees
Presence: Operations in 50 Countries
Production Sites: 200 Breweries + 40 Vertical Facilities
Website: www.ab-inbev.com

EXECUTIVE PROFILE: Marcelo Ribeiro
Title: Global Vice President, Engineering and Operations, Anheuser-Busch InBev
Nationality: Brazilian
Education: BSc Mechanical Engineering, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil; MBA, Universidade Luterana do
Brasil-Canoas RS, Brazil; Accelerated Leadership, INSEAD, Paris, France.
Languages: Portuguese, English, German, Spanish
Previous Roles Include:
    – Global Vice President, Engineering, Anheuser-Busch InBev
– Zone Brewery Support, North America Region, Anheuser-Busch InBev
– Global Packaging Director, Anheuser-Busch InBev
–  APAC Zone Brewery Support, Anheuser-Busch InBev
–  People Supply Director – Canada, Anheuser-Busch InBev
–  VPO Implementation Manager, Montreal & London, Anheuser-Busch InBev
–  Plant Manager – AmBev
–  Corporate Manager, Manufacturing Projects Leader, AmBev,
–  Project Manager, Fichtner Consulting Engineers

Other Industry Roles/Awards/Board Memberships
      – 2022 Manufacturer of the Year – Large Enterprise, Manufacturing Leadership Awards MLC/NAM

About the author:
Paul Tate is Co-founding Executive Editor and Senior Content Director of the NAM’s. Manufacturing Leadership Council.

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Heading to the beach? Take along the Manufacturing Leadership Council’s summer reading list to catch up on today’s top trends in digital manufacturing while you catch some rays. With these articles, you’ll discover new ideas, technologies and best practices to give your company a competitive edge.

Workforce: Leading the Way to Workforce Optimization. As digitization changes employees’ expectations of their employers, manufacturers must adapt. Examples include options for remote work, interactive training, agile and rapid collaboration platforms, career development, work-life balance and more.

Industrial automation: Camozzi’s Autonomous Vision. Successful autonomous manufacturing will depend on the fundamental relationship between humans and machines, says Camozzi Group CEO Lodovico Camozzi, whose company makes industrial machinery. In a recent interview with the MLC, Camozzi shared his view of manufacturing’s autonomous future, including:

• How advanced additive manufacturing approaches promise new production paradigms;
• The importance of collaboration in driving innovation and excellence; and,
• Why the industry must maintain a human focus in today’s digital world.

Cybersecurity: Ransomware Attacks Increasingly Targeting Manufacturers. Think your business is safe from hackers? Think again. Ransomware attacks against manufacturers are on the rise. All businesses should be on guard against cyber extortion, advises Peter Vescuso, vice president of marketing for industrial cybersecurity provider Dragos and a member of the MLC.

Supply chain: How Manufacturers Can Navigate Supply Chain Challenges.
As global supply chain woes, worker shortages and wage inflation challenges intensify, manufacturers everywhere want to know the best way to navigate them. In this article, a panel of industry experts shares top tips to sustainably and profitably overcome current obstacles.

Artificial Intelligence: AI Roadmap: How Manufacturers Can Amplify Intelligence with Artificial Intelligence. Artificial intelligence offers manufacturers a host of benefits, including better visibility into supply chains, insights from predictive analytics and the ability to quickly respond to unexpected changes in demand. A six-step road map can help manufacturers looking to integrate AI into their businesses.

5G: 5G Will Help Unlock M4.0’s Potential. 5G technology offers speed and capacity advantages to manufacturing companies. According to the MLC’s recent Transformative Technologies survey, 26% of manufacturers have already invested in 5G technology. More than half expect to invest or are considering investing in the technology over the next two years to take advantage of 5G’s benefits.

Sustainability: Overcoming Roadblocks to Advance Sustainability Programs.
The manufacturing industry is expected to improve its sustainability and keep leading the fight against climate change. However, making green changes to processes and procedures can be costly. To get the most bang out of their sustainability investments, manufacturers should focus on data-driven initiatives and indicators.

Looking for more digital manufacturing insights? Browse the Manufacturing Leadership Journal for additional information on technology, organizational structure and leadership in manufacturing’s digital era.

Manufacturing Leadership Journal content and MLC resources are exclusively available to MLC members. Please sign up for an account or log in to view this content.

Manufacturing Leadership Journal content and MLC resources are exclusively available to MLC members. Please sign up for an account or log in to view this content.

Manufacturing Leadership Journal content and MLC resources are exclusively available to MLC members. Please sign up for an account or log in to view this content.

Cyber AI can be a force multiplier that enables organizations to respond faster than attackers can move, and to anticipate and react in advance.   

Despite making significant investments in security technologies, organizations in many industries continue to struggle with security breaches. Their adversaries are quick to evolve tactics and stay ahead of the technology curve. Humans may soon be overwhelmed by the sheer volume, sophistication, and difficulty of detecting cyberattacks.

Companies are already challenged to efficiently analyze the data flowing into the security operations center (SOC) from across the security tech stack. This doesn’t include the information feeds from network devices, application data, and other inputs across the broader technology stack that are often targeted by advanced attackers looking for new vectors, old misconfigurations, or using new malware. As the enterprise increasingly expands beyond its firewalls, security analysts are charged with protecting a constantly growing attack surface.

Meanwhile, the cost of cybercrime continues to climb and is expected to increase from US$3 trillion in 2015 to $10.5 trillion by 2025.[i] The average cost of a single data breach in 2021 was $4.24 million,[ii] a 10% increase from 2019. According to insurer AIG, ransomware claims alone have grown 150% since 2018.[iii]

“The adoption of 5G networks and an increase in network connections, together with a more distributed workforce and a broadening partner ecosystem, present new risks.”

It’s time to call for AI backup. Cyber AI can be a force multiplier that enables organizations not only to respond faster than attackers can move, but also to anticipate these moves and react to them in advance. Cyber AI technology and tools are in the early stages of adoption with new advances frequently occurring. The global market for these tools is expected to grow by $19 billion between 2021 and 2025.[iv]

AI’s ability to adaptively learn and detect novel patterns can accelerate detection, containment, and response, easing the burden on SOC analysts and allowing them to be more proactive. The bonus is that it can also help organizations prepare for the eventual development of AI-driven cybercrimes.

Expanding Enterprise Attack Surfaces

Organizations’ attack surfaces are expanding exponentially. The adoption of 5G networks and an increase in network connections, together with a more distributed workforce and a broadening partner ecosystem, present new risks. They’re exposing the enterprise outside of its firewalls and pushing into customer devices, employee homes, and partner networks. Here are a few of the ways manufacturers have seen their attack surfaces increase:

Increase in connected devices: 5G, IoT, Wi-Fi 6, and other networking advances are driving an increase in network-connected devices. When seeking a soft attack vector, cybercriminals will be able to choose from a growing number of network-connected physical assets—29.3 billion by 2023, according to one estimate.[v]

The unprecedented number of devices connected to these networks produce data that needs to be processed and secured, contributing to the data logjam in the SOC. It can be challenging to keep track of and manage active assets, their purpose, and their expected behavior, especially when they’re managed by service orchestrators.

Broader ecosystem of partners: As the enterprise continues to extend with an increasingly global supply chain, hosted data, infrastructure, and services have long contributed to third-party risk. And as more and more organizations integrate data with third-party applications, APIs are a growing security concern.

Third-party breaches are also growing in complexity. Five years ago, an intruder might use widely available malware to target specific computer systems, gain contractor credentials, and steal customer data—messy, to be sure, but with a clear source and the ability to monitor and remediate the damage.

“AI will be increasingly important for many manufacturing clients as they undergo the digital transformation of their factories with Industry 4.0 technologies.”

Such an attack pales in comparison to today’s sophisticated intrusions, in which information stolen from one company can be used to compromise thousands of its customers and suppliers. Supply chain attacks can do the same by exploiting the least-secure embedded components of complex supply networks. A breach with no boundaries can be nearly impossible to monitor and remediate, with active theft potentially continuing for many years.

Adoption of 5G networks: 5G is expected to completely transform enterprise networks with new connections, capabilities, and services. But the shift to 5G’s mix of hardware and distributed, software-defined networks, open architectures, and virtualized infrastructure creates new vulnerabilities and a larger attack surface, which will require more dynamic cyber protection.

As public 5G networks expand, many manufacturing organizations have also begun to invest in private and hybrid 5G networks that meet enterprise requirements for lower latency, data privacy, and secure wireless connectivity. From autonomous vehicles and drones to smart factory devices and mobile phones, an entire ecosystem of public and private 5G networks—connected devices, applications, and services—will create additional potential entry points for hackers. Each asset will need to be configured to meet specific security requirements. And with the increasing variety of devices, the network becomes more heterogenous and more challenging to monitor and protect.

AI Defense Against Cyberthreats

Expanding attack surfaces and the escalating severity and complexity of cyberthreats are exacerbated by a chronic shortage of cybersecurity talent. Employment in the field would have to grow by approximately 89% to eliminate the estimated global shortage of more than 3 million cybersecurity professionals.[vi] AI can help fill this gap.

Accelerated threat detection: Advanced analytics and machine learning platforms can efficiently sift through the high volume of data generated by security tools, identify deviations from the norm, evaluate the data from the thousands of new connected assets that are flooding the network, and be trained to distinguish between legitimate and malicious files, connections, devices, and users.

Force multiplier in containment and response: AI can also serve as a force multiplier that helps security teams automate time-consuming activities and streamline containment and response. Consider machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, reinforcement learning, knowledge representation, and other AI approaches. When paired with automated evaluation and decision-making, AI can help analysts manage an escalating number of increasingly complex security threats and achieve scale.

“Expanding attack surfaces and the escalating severity and complexity of cyberthreats are exacerbated by a chronic shortage of cybersecurity talent. AI can help fill this gap.”

Proactive security posture: Properly trained AI can enable a more proactive security posture and promote cyber resilience, potentially allowing organizations to stay in operation even when under attack and reducing the amount of time an adversary is in the environment. For example, context-rich user behavior analytics can be combined with unsupervised machine learning algorithms to automatically test user activities; recognize typical patterns in network activity or data access; identify, evaluate, and flag anomalies (and disregard false alarms); and decide if response or intervention is intended. And by feeding intelligence to human security specialists and enabling them to actively engage in adversary pursuit, AI enables proactive threat hunting.

Building an AI Security Roadmap

AI will be increasingly important for many manufacturing clients as they undergo the digital transformation of their factories with Industry 4.0 technologies (e.g., smart factories). With the expectation that 175 Zetabytes of data will be generated by 2025[vii], manufacturing clients should begin preparing for AI as it simply cannot just occur overnight. Protecting client data is vital to keeping manufacturing lines operational and the quality of the product intact.

As companies have visited The Smart Factory @ Wichita and discussed their visions for digital transformation, common threads have emerged around security gaps that need to be filled as part of their roadmaps towards achieving an AI-enabled cyber security strategy.

Network segmentation: Data from a company’s Operational Technology (OT) environment (e.g., manufacturing network) will likely need to flow into their enterprise cloud environment as part of their advanced analytics solution to measure various Key Performance Objectives (KPOs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). In many circumstances, little to no network segmentation is in place between a company’s IT environment and their OT environment. A lack of segmentation exposes the manufacturing environment to nefarious actors who could manipulate, deny, or destroy or steal critical data/processes.

“AI’s ability to identify patterns and adaptively learn in real time as events warrant can accelerate detection, containment, and response, help reduce the heavy load on SOC analysts, and enable them to be more proactive.”

Identity access & authentication:  It’s integral that all users, not just individuals but also devices and services, have proper controls in place so that only the approved users can authenticate and communicate within the manufacturing environment. Additional controls such as Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) serve to further enhance security as entities prepare for enabling AI.  Authentication can further enable AI as the controls help answer key questions for faster decision making: Is the access originating from a known location? Is a user switching from a private to a public network? Is the time and data pattern for the access during expected hours of work? Is the access from a known device or services that are known to communicate?

Security monitoring: A security monitoring solution helps further enable securing the manufacturing environment by passively sensing the data on the network.  As the environment is baselined, the solution continues to listen to the dataflows in the environment to provide visibility in the network, identify vulnerabilities, detect anomalous activity, and report back on it. A security monitoring solution can help further prepare the environment by further understanding OT asset behaviors to detect potential threats. As organizations continue to prepare for an AI-based approach, data from sensors that understand OT communications and protocols become critical for understanding threats in process control environments.

The Way Forward

On its own, AI (or any other technology, for that matter) isn’t going to solve today’s or tomorrow’s complex security challenges. AI’s ability to identify patterns and adaptively learn in real time as events warrant can accelerate detection, containment, and response, help reduce the heavy load on SOC analysts, and enable them to be more proactive. These professionals will likely remain in high demand, but AI will change their roles. Organizations will need to reskill and retrain analysts to help change their focus from triaging alerts and other lower-level skills to more strategic, proactive activities. Finally, as the elements of AI- and machine learning-driven security threats begin to emerge, AI can help security teams prepare for the eventual development of AI-driven cybercrimes in the years ahead. M

Footnotes:

[i] Steve Morgan, “Cybercrime to cost the world $10.5 trillion annually by 2025 ,” Cybersecurity Ventures, November 13, 2020.

[ii] Steve Morgan, “Cybercrime to cost the world $10.5 trillion annually by 2025 ,” Cybersecurity Ventures, November 13, 2020.

[iii] CNBC, “Cybercrime could cost $10.5 trillion dollars by 2025, according to Cybersecurity Ventures ,” March 9, 2021.

[iv] PR Newswire, “Artificial intelligence-based cybersecurity market grows by $19 billion during 2021-2025 ,” June 21, 2021.

[v] Cisco, Cisco annual internet report (2018–2023) white paper 

[vi] (ISC)², “(ISC)² study reveals the cybersecurity workforce has grown to 3.5 million professionals globally.”

[vii] Tom Coughlin, “175 Zettabytes by 2025,” Forbes, November 27, 2018.

About the authors:

Sharon Chand is a principal at Deloitte & Touche LLP and the Cyber Risk Secure Supply Chain leader for the Cyber Risk Services practice of Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory.

Ryan Moore is a Deloitte & Touche LLP Senior Manager in the Cyber Risk Services practice.

This article contains general information only, does not constitute professional advice or services, and should not be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. The authors shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person who relies on this article.

Manufacturers flocked to Florida this summer to discuss the cultures, skills and technologies necessary for digital transformation at the 2022 Rethink Summit, the signature event of the NAM’s Manufacturing Leadership Council. The MLC is the world’s first member-driven, global business leadership network dedicated to senior executives in the manufacturing industry.

The big event: The first in-person Rethink since 2019, this year’s summit drew the largest crowd since the annual event began 18 years ago.

• The conference in Marco Island, Florida, hosted some of the most innovative leaders and teams in the industry, from companies such as Pfizer, Intel, Dow, Saint-Gobain and many more.
• Participants learned about real-world advances and shared best practices in supply chain resilience, effective business cultures, machine learning, business ecosystems and more—as explained by industry experts who put these innovations into practice themselves.

The panels: Here is a quick sample from the array of manufacturing expertise on offer.

• A Pfizer case study: Pfizer Vice President of Digital Manufacturing Mike Tomasco explained how Pfizer Global Supply transformed itself from a digitally siloed operation to a world-class digital powerhouse.
• Bridging the digital divide: A panel of leaders—including Graphicast President Val Zanchuk, BTE Technologies President and NAM SMM Board Chair Chuck Wetherington and Intel Senior Director of Industrial Innovation Irene Petrick—discussed how small and medium-sized manufacturers can keep up with the digital transformation occurring throughout the industry.
• Reaching the next generation: A panel of young manufacturing leaders from Dow, Cooley Group and Saint-Gobain North America discussed what young people are looking for in manufacturing jobs, including interdisciplinary teams and lots of communications up and down the organization levels.

A week of manufacturing: The Rethink Summit was only one highlight of a week of manufacturing events put on by the MLC. The roster of events also included the MLC’s Council Day and the ML Awards Gala.

• Council Day offers MLC members the opportunity to chart the agenda for the MLC’s next year, thus influencing how the whole industry thinks about and plans for digital innovation.
• The Awards Gala spotlights companies and individuals doing incredible work to advance M4.0. The black-tie event honored leaders and companies in 11 project categories, plus the Manufacturers of the Year and Manufacturing Leader of the Year.
• This year, the MLC named Pfizer CEO Dr. Albert Bourla the Manufacturing Leader of the Year, for Pfizer’s extraordinary and ongoing contributions in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

The last word: “[T]he fundamental shift in our economy to doing business digitally in all industries, including manufacturing, not only continues but is gaining greater speed and urgency,” said MLC Co-Founder David R. Brousell during an address at Rethink.

 Join us next year: Keep up to date with the MLC by visiting the website and stay tuned for Rethink 2023!

Manufacturing Leadership Journal content and MLC resources are exclusively available to MLC members. Please sign up for an account or log in to view this content.

Manufacturing Leadership Journal content and MLC resources are exclusively available to MLC members. Please sign up for an account or log in to view this content.