As factories become more connected mostly through predictive maintenance, industrial networking, and edge data processing are becoming more critical to the overall efficiency of equipment, which measures how activities are being used efficiently. To manage the emerging Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT), the projected propagation of billions of IoT devices in the next ten years, and their continued up-to-date vertical development are crucial. Within a single platform, visibility, control, and troubleshooting are required for activities and IT teams to help and scale the many endpoints. Modernization also changes how OT and IT organizations operate together to promote digital transformation and invest in technology.

What is the manufacturing platform?

A manufacturing platform is a complex ecosystem involving asset management, process engineering, supply chain management, performance management, planning, smart manufacturing, operational visibility, quality control, data security, and personnel management. Within the factory, linked systems usually involve a specific 'technology stack' to allow interoperability, data exchange, and engagement between inner systems and external collaborators. Furthermore, the technology stack should be capable of solid data analytics, visualizations, upgrades, and securing access to and flow of information from products.

What is a smart manufacturing platform?

Historically, the manufacturing industry has been an active user and a direct beneficiary of advancements in technology. Successive industrial revolutions have driven industry from a scarce world to a surplus— quality products and alternative choices. The combined capabilities of mass production and precision engineering made this increase in quality of life possible. Our factories are preparing for the next large step in their evolution— collaborative and self-aware platforms — after championing accuracy, effectiveness, and scale.

A smart manufacturing platform is a fully integrated, cooperative platform for manufacturing that reacts to changing requirements and circumstances in the supply network, in the plant and client requirements in real-time. How they use digital platforms is a significant disruption point for businesses driving conversion. The way businesses work together and create platforms will become more fundamental to their customers' deliveries. Developing and delivering solutions that expand with partners and third parties will be a key to achievement in this new economy and an essential part of enhancing the overall customer experience.

The smart manufacturing platform technology has surfaced with the prevalence of digital era

Smart manufacturing platform helps to integrate with the industrial internet of things (IIoT) technologies such as smart manufacturing or Industry 4.0. This helps to collect, analyze, use suitable information, thus providing better perspectives into direct action and creating competitive advantage. Manufacturing 4.0 frameworks will not be an overnight upgrade, but a carefully calculated journey. It is a journey involving planning, upgrading infrastructure, meticulous testing, interconnecting complex systems, re-skilling individuals, and optimized workflow implementation. In most instances, existing equipment can be upgraded with smart capacities rather than having them replaced. The current BI solution can also be used by the data warehouse. A consideration would be to implement best practices and standards in the sector in order to make it simpler to work together and to meet market requirements.

When all is well, what’s holding back the growth of these platforms?

• Cost

Implementation of new techniques and investment in software development can often be prohibitively costly for small and medium-sized enterprises. One of the major mandates to build platforms is to discover a way to provide accessible access to the smart manufacturing platform technology for smaller businesses.

• The old industry mindset

Apart from cost, some of the challenges to intelligent manufacturing techniques arise from employees who feel overwhelmed or who do not have access to the correct instruments. Manufacturers may be unsure as to whether these new analytical tools will help to address manufacturing issues or whether an investment in these new tools will provide sufficient ROI. In the past, at the beginning of manufacturing, companies preferred to want complete knowledge and outline a predictable ROI.

• Data context

The challenge is to discover methods in meaningful situations to collect, organize, and orchestrate information use. Operations managers need to be able to look at the data instantly and see what activities need to be taken to achieve a manufacturing goal such as quicker output or more accurate product manufacturing. Data and modeling can be used when correctly organized to evaluate, visualize, control, predict, optimize, track, diagnose, and self-examine manufacturing procedures, resulting in an abundance of insight for producers.

• Data standards

Smart manufacturing yields a lot of useful information. But unlocking that value needs ingestion, management, and contextualization of information effectively. Only when labeling, interpreting and examining data within an operational context can data be efficiently evaluated for decision-making. However, information often comes from a variety of sources in intelligent production: equipment, procedures, sensors, human inputs and apps from various suppliers using distinct protocols and time frames. Some information may be organized for reuse while other information may be specific to a specific model or application.

The smart factory of tomorrow

The smart manufacturing platform market is growing exponentially with the rise of the digital era. The main element of a factory in Industry 4.0 will be to enable cyber-physical systems to acquire self-awareness and predictability to handle the factory more effectively. New techniques such as additive production, augmented reality, and cloud computing, cobots, cyber-safety, and information science are anticipated to play a crucial part in near-zero downtime optimized production. This new standard will be the ideology of distributed decision-making and centralized supervision. The world is moving towards an economy based on service and subscription. Customers now prefer renting products rather than having permanent ownership. The roles of manufacturer and service provider are blurring in this context to reveal new opportunities, business models, and streams of revenue.