When I first attended the Hannover Fair, the “who’s who” of industrial automation showcased mostly homegrown solutions based on proprietary technologies. That was 12 years ago, and none of the high-tech players even bothered to show up at this major industrial automation event. Back then, the vertical industrial and horizontal digital worlds were far apart.
Fast-forward to last April’s Hannover Fair. In every hall, I saw key digital and industrial vendors demonstrating joint solutions based on open and increasingly interoperable standards. In just a dozen years, the industrial and tech worlds had converged and started to transform manufacturing.
Five advanced technologies in particular — the internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, fog computing and early 5G — are driving advances in smart manufacturing, or Industry 4.0. And increasingly, manufacturers and their partner ecosystems are moving beyond early applications of these technologies focused on improving existing processes. As manufacturers gain more experience, improve project success ratios and see higher ROI, they are progressing on their digital journeys to transform operations, value propositions, business models, and services for themselves and their customers.
Still, too many companies in this $35 trillion industry hold on to traditional ways of doing things from both technology and business process perspectives that block them from realizing digital’s full potential.
This is the second part in a series of articles on how different industries can unlock the full potential of transformational technologies. This time we’ll be focusing on the manufacturing sector.
The manufacturing industry is buzzing with technology ideas, from various applications of digital twins to the evolution of predictive maintenance applications. The good news is that the market is quickly evolving from a technology-centric to a solution-centric mindset. We are also realizing that the impact of individual technologies in isolation is limited; their full value becomes apparent when they’re integrated.
In part one of this series, I noted how the five transformational technologies remind me of various domains of the human body. IoT and 5G are the body itself, creating and transmitting data, and sometimes executing on the decisions based on this data. AI is the brain, turning data into intelligence for smarter decisions. Blockchain is the antibody, making the system trustworthy, while fog computing is the vagus nerve, which ensures key functions are properly distributed from the cloud to the edge to the devices.
Let’s dig a bit deeper.
Internet Of Things (The body and its senses)
We have already seen plenty of examples of IoT in action. Benteler Automobiltechnik GmbH, which manufactures automobile components, connects every aspect of production processes, creating automated, self-running factories that are agile, efficient and can be operated remotely. Rockwell Automation has partnered with other companies to connect network servers in healthcare and manufacturing environments via the fast-growing infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market. And Harley Davison consolidated data with its IoT-laden smart factory onto a single network, cutting its motorcycle production cycle from 21 days to six hours and its operating costs by $200 million.
5G (The body transmitter)
These IoT capabilities can now be turbo-charged, with 5G and low-earth orbit satellite constellations being deployed at scale in the next few years. Both will provide a ubiquitous blanket of high-speed connectivity for every machine, every process, and every location, eliminating bandwidth and latency limitations for many applications. As the result, manufacturers will be able to deploy new classes of sensing technologies or adopt AI at scale to drive further flexibility and performance of their global operations.
Artificial Intelligence (The brain)
Guardhat is one of my favorite examples of AI in manufacturing. The company integrates multiple technologies into hard hats — including IoT, AI, sensors, data analytics and video — with its cloud-based system. The connected hard hats help workers in construction, oil and gas, mining, and other field operations navigate in the dark, avoid hazardous conditions or move equipment. FANUC, a Japanese industrial equipment maker, uses its “zero downtime” capabilities and AI to analyze data from robots.
Blockchain (The antibody)
As a distributed ledger shared publicly or privately, blockchain-based systems combined with IoT and AI are increasingly providing a single source of truth to track goods and transactions or verify the authenticity of products. Think about the impact global supplier networks can have on business continuity and risk with visibility down to seven layers in the supply chain. Think about dramatically reducing the global trade of counterfeit goods, valued at $462 billion yearly and growing to $2.3 trillion by 2022. IBM and Maersk (registration required) are testing blockchain with partners to improve visibility, security, efficiency and documentation of shipped goods. Although blockchain is still overhyped and misunderstood, its early applications in manufacturing and supply chains are promising.
Fog Computing (The vagus nerve)
Fog computing is a vital link throughout the network — from the edge to the cloud — that opens bandwidth and decreases latency by distributing data loads across the enterprise, thereby enhancing computer processing, analytics, security and network control. When fog computing is combined with IoT, AI and blockchain, self-driving vehicles can immediately make navigational decisions from dynamic data inside and outside the vehicle. For example, VW Electronics Research Lab engineers are exploring the integration of such digital technologies to reshape the creation of autonomous vehicles so they can seamlessly interact with smart transportation systems.
Cultivating A Culture Of Innovation
Remember, there’s one vital ingredient to ensure the success of these digital technologies: people. The complexity of integrating digital technologies with each other and company systems requires a new kind of culture of innovation.
Leaders must foster greater cross-functional collaboration, especially with IT and OT, as well as among specialized partner ecosystems. They must also cultivate an environment of constant learning to equip employees with both technical and soft skills to adapt to the ever-expanding digital universe based on unprecedented speed, flexibility and agility.
The manufacturing industry has come a long way in integrating digital capabilities. Based on this foundation, these five transformational technologies can offer another major leap forward for this sector.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com.