Survey: Smart Factories Are Still a Work in Progress

Manufacturers are moving ahead with creating smarter factories as they grapple with cultural resistance and integrating new technologies. 

TAKEAWAYS:
● A majority of manufacturers say their investments in M4.0 technologies to create smart factories will continue unchanged this year.
● Most manufacturers are at an intermediate stage with M4.0 adoption.
● The most significant roadblock to implementing a smart factory strategy is an organizational structure or culture that resists change.  

Tracking the evolution of factories and plants to become so-called smart facilities is a bit like trying to discern the movement of a glacier. You can watch intently but it is hard to detect change. And when change does occur, it is measured in inches. But like a glacier, over time the movement to smart factories and plants will encompass all a production facility does and in a profound way.

The manufacturing industry is inexorably marching toward a day when smart factories and plants, powered by intelligent, sensor-based networks that generate vast volumes of data that are analyzed by artificial intelligence systems, will operate with less human intervention. Highly automated, increasingly intelligent and flexible, the smart factory of the future beckons.

As we head toward that promised land, we look for markers along the way, indications that may tell us where we are making progress and where the obstacles to that progress may lie. The Manufacturing Leadership Council’s new Smart Factories and Digital Production survey sheds light on those markers.

Section 1: STATUS OF DIGITAL INVESTMENT AND ADOPTION

At the highest level, the industry’s posture with regards to investing in Manufacturing 4.0 technologies to create smart factories appears to be on solid footing. In the new survey, nearly 69% of respondents indicated that their M4.0 investments this year would continue unchanged from last year. Nearly 19% said they would increase investments and only 10% said their investments would decline (Chart 1). Concerns about a recession have evidently eased.

As manufacturers continue to invest in digitalization, they have moved from the initial stages of developing awareness and conducting research into M4.0 to action. Thirty percent of the respondents to the survey say they implementing small-scale pilots, experimenting with a range of projects, or scaling M4.0 companywide. Interestingly, about 31% report they are at the stage of conducting M4.0 readiness assessments, which, when completed, should spawn many pilots and projects (Chart 3).

When looked at the stage of adoption functionally – in R&D, product design, and in production and assembly, for example – a strong majority of respondents say they are at an “intermediate stage” with M4.0. Those at an “advanced” stage represent only single-digit or low double-digit constituencies (Chart 4).