Smart Manufacturing Enablers & Enhancers

Feb 13

According to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), we are at a stage within Industry 4.0 where some of the new disruptive technologies are mature enough to be leveraged by the industry (referred to as ‘Enablers’). As part of this journey, there are also a set of design principles that are currently under development and of high relevance for archiving successful implementation of smart manufacturing (referred to as ‘Enhancers’)

Three key characteristics that allowed technologies to become ‘Enablers’

Cheap and abundant data storage
Fast and responsive computers and calculation power
Ubiquitous and place-independent connectivity

Together these Enablers serve as the basis for today’s accelerated digital transformation.

When the ‘Enablers’ are fully utilized along with the ‘Enhancers’ there will bound to be new disruptive scenarios as we collectively transition into a ‘Smart Industry’. The future effects will lead to:

Circular manufacturing: The possibility to make products and production more sustainable and take advantage of retired products and their collected lifecycle information, filter out the essence, and use feedback for improving the manufacturing processes as well as the product itself.
Model-based product and production: The ability to utilize models at every point in the product lifecycle for the optimum use of the product.
Fully automated factories: The ability to use new technologies to enable new configurations of production automated to a very high degree.
Product personalization: The possibility to make mass-produced products more personalized
Predictive maintenance: The possibility to act prior to an unfavorable event (e.g. failure) and use in-process monitoring to enable the identification of the optimum time to replace parts, and hence maximize the service life.
Edge computing: The possibility to have all automation, including real-time control, in the edge of the cloud.
Servitization: The possibility to augment traditional physical products with related services. Hence, the product becomes a by-product of the service.
Data-driven business models: business models that are developed and customized based on data from the business. The more data, the better the business model.