The constraints affecting today’s manufacturing world are numerous and well documented: the broad impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in the Great Resignation, coupled with a weak and severely taxed global supply chain following the epidemic. Plagued by these issues, manufacturing firms have understood the relevance of shop floor digitalization as the sole option to traverse the challenges and better serve their brand consumers.
With an aim to gain operational efficiency, cost savings, and improve responsiveness and resilience to future disruptions, they are embracing the latest digital solutions for their shop floor management. To that end, technologies like Digital thread are helping manufacturers to collect more data from various sources, including consumers and other third-party sources. This allows them to improve accuracy in understanding the present and future market demands and plan their actions to accomplish the desired goals. The Digital thread also promises to provide all stakeholders with greater access to richer data pools, allowing for improved control of mission-critical devices.
However, while opting for digitalization, manufacturers must also take into account that software is only one component of a shop floor transformation. For example, to improve uptime by increasing the visibility of data collection—through displaying dashboard monitors on the floor or even by enhancing program storage and NC program transferring abilities among legacy machinery—hardware plays a key role by outfitting them with portable floppy drives.
Apart from the technological mandates, the mindset to embrace the transformation also plays a crucial role in creating a digital shop floor. Thanks to the technological boom that started after the pandemic, where innovators have successfully changed the dynamics of operating modern workplaces, manufacturers are now more courageous while embracing digital technologies and solutions for shop floor management. Today, they aspire to bridge the gap between IT and OT by combining manufacturing assets, data from IIoTs, and process controls to form the foundation of their Smart Factory. In this regard, the rising tide of investments to digitize manufacturing technologies also plays a major role. Over the past five years, equity funding to the sector has nearly tripled to reach nearly $6.5 Billion.
Looking ahead, with technologies such as robots, AI, IIoT, and increased investments to enable advancements in digital manufacturing technologies, the manufacturing industry can be expected to achieve unprecedented levels of frictionless production and workforce augmentation.
