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Major industrial players like Schneider Electric, ABB have accelerated their smart factory initiatives opening multiple smart factories and distribution centres in emerging locations across India and China. These companies have been scaling their adoption of new manufacturing systems and modernizing their traditional systems. Service providers can target these smart factories and Centres of Excellence (CoEs) to capitalize on the ocean of technology opportunities.
Manufacturing companies have taken a giant leap forward in Industry 4.0 that represents a highly connected and automated flexible production floor. The next leap will be focused on achieving design and operational efficiency and scaling the solution deployments. With these issues shaping the future of Industry 4.0, the core challenge for organizations lies in scaling their smart factory initiatives.
Organizations have shown a lot of appetite and intent in scaling their smart factory initiatives across the globe:
- Major players like Siemens, Schneider Electric, Panasonic have been actively setting up smart factories in India and China
- Telco giants like Ericsson have setup 5G center of excellence exclusively focused on smart factory and industry 4.0 initiatives
- Smart factory investments are expected to double in the next 5 years focused towards new center setup and transformation of legacy factories
Rising penetration of smart factory use-cases, faster return on investments and need for competitive advantage are the core reasons behind this uptick. Major companies have already transformed one-third of their factories to smart functions and are focused to achieve 100% penetration. While Industrial companies have been the leaders of this initiative, Power, Auto, and Energy sectors have been aggressively implementing smart factory solutions as well. More than 40% of factories globally are expected to be modernized by connected factory solutions over the next 5 years.
Organizations realize that they have a herculean task ahead in scaling their smart factory initiatives. The core agenda is to achieve performance at scale by overcoming the major challenges that impede the smart factory initiatives:
- Development and integration of digital platforms and technologies such as Remote monitoring, Manufacturing Execution Systems, Predictive maintenance, Digital twin, etc.
- Achieving data readiness through connected assets solutions that enable a seamless flow of data for advanced analytics and insights generation
- Advance data analytics to achieve operational efficiency across production, logistics and procurement planning.
Organizations rely on technology partners and service providers to overcome these challenges and achieve faster returns. Industrial IoT companies such as GE, ABB, etc. have been the critical enablers of smart factory solutions with their portfolio of digital factory use-cases. Startups, on the other hand, have been instrumental in identifying new digital innovations that are scalable and easy for integration.
Service providers can target the centers in India and China to offer niche smart factory solutions and services that can open an array of partnership opportunities. Some of the digital services/solutions that could help companies accelerate their smart factory initiatives include:
- Deploying and integrating critical use-cases across Remote monitoring, Digital twins, Predictive maintenance, etc.
- Breaking data silos using collaborative and agile methodologies
- Development of digital platforms that can source, manage, analyze, and deliver high-value data insights
- Accelerating and securing physical-digital convergence
Draup’s digital intentions are extremely efficient in analyzing the particulars of smart factory initiatives in real-time. The market trends, talent landscape, talent characteristics, top employers and start-ups, along with the funding and acquisition data on the platform enables service providers to identify, analyze and predict the emergence of such smart factories, thereby assisting them to curate an ideal value proposition.
