How Digital Manufacturing will help Industries?

The digital revolution is now breaching the walls of manufacturing as it continues to disturb media finance, healthcare, consumer products, and other sectors. The explosion in information and new computing capabilities like artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation will alter the nature of manufacturing itself. Digital connectivity among designers, workers, managers, consumers and physical industrial assets will unlock huge value and change the manufacturing landscape forever.

Up till now manufacturing generates more information than any other sector of the economy, some companies are harnessing it. One oil-and-gas company, for instance, discards 99% of its information before decision makers have an opportunity to utilize it.

Consider traditional car manufacturers and Uber that are at the highest level in the business of moving people around. They meet people’s transportation requirements not with glass, steel, runner, and salespeople but with data, matching person vehicles and riders by means of smart phones. Barely 5 years into its existence, it is valued at approx. $50 billion, as per a marketresearch.

Response of leading manufacturers to digital:

The methods people and firms use details had shifted dramatically. Information storage is inexpensive and flexible, and advanced analytics and AI are giving us new abilities to draw insights from large amount of information. Advances in AR and VR, next-level interfaces, addictive manufacturing, and advanced robotic are all opening the gates to digital disruption. In the next decade, digital manufacturing technologies will permit companies to connect physical assets by a “digital thread.” This will unleash a seamless flow of data across the value chain, which will link every phase of the product life cycle, from sourcing, design, testing, and production to distribution, point of sale and use.

 

Use Cases:

Pharmaceutical companies are using their deeper understanding of continuous procedures to enlarge constant manufacturing suites with footprints less than half size of conventional factories. Few have even developed portable factories, which can be built in 40-foot trailers. They are utilizing the digital thread to enhance quality control. Some companies are now relying on infrared technology to identify bogus drugs and contaminants devoid of the conventional critical tests.

Worldwide fashion retailer Zara is already renowned for developing and shipping new products within 2 weeks. It is now utilizing digital techniques to respond even faster to customer’s preference and lessen supply-chain costs; connecting reusable RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags to every item of clothing in more than 700 of its 2,000-plus stores. 10 staff members can now update a store’s inventory in less than few hours. Unlike before, it used to take 40 employees for more than 5 hours.  

The aerospace-and-defense industry is using digital tools to amalgamate an extremely complex supply network.  An advance jet turbine engine has hundreds of individual parts, for instance, few of which the engine manufacturer makes in-house and others it sources from a network of dozens vendors. Along with cloud computing-based tools, providers can work together faster and more proficiently. A maker of engine can share 3D models of component design within its network, and each supplier in turn can share data regarding delivery, price, and quality.

Those manufacturers who have implemented digital manufacturing have normally reported substantial advantages from improved procedure and production planning. These advantages include increased production throughout, reduction in capital costs, better use of facilities, reduced lead times, improved product quality, a lessening in operating costs, and a reduction in continued product support.