Smart Manufacturing: 5 reasons to digitize the industrial production chain

In these last years, the concept of Smart Manufacturing has gained a lot of interest in the manufacturing industry. This sector has opted for the digitization of its processes to obtain greater productivity and efficiency in all work stages.

But what do we actually mean by Smart Manufacturing?

Smart Manufacturing refers to a set of highly digitized and connected processes within the supply chain of factories. These practices enable companies to complete tasks without human intervention and can be appointed with artificial intelligence to learn from different situations and adapt to changes in real-time.

The enabling technologies of smart manufacturing like IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Extended Reality, and Big Data give manufacturing and assembling companies the opportunity to improve their core processes and quality assurance levels.

 

What benefits does Smart Manufacturing bring?

There is a wide range of benefits that allow companies to visualize the entire chain process and make decisions based on the results obtained.

Automatization of data management: Collecting data in an automized way allows companies to carry out a thorough analysis of production processes, enabling them to take anticipated and valuable decisions for the business.

For example, the ability to optimize manufacturing times to produce a higher number of products as well as improve the quality of the production by applying solutions capable of supervising the production processes to detect faulty parts and pieces before the process ends.

Predictive maintenance: Artificial intelligence and machine learning enable the application of solutions capable of identifying beforehand breakage or wearing out of parts and pieces on the production machinery.

These types of solutions are can generate alerts and insights that indicate when maintenance in the equipment and machinery is needed to avoid ruptures or failures in machines, this way it can prevent the production line from stopping. All the information that IoT sensors offer and the use of this data in big data infrastructures on the cloud can transform into key information and data that artificial intelligence and machine learning models use to create these types of solutions.

Cost optimization: By centralizing key business systems, companies can gain greater control over surplus waste and increase the accuracy of manufacturing forecasts.

This way, in the majority of cases it is not necessary to supply more raw material than what is actually needed according to the real demand. It is the way to get an end-to-end view of the entire supply chain process, inventory levels, delivery status, and demand cycles.

Reduction of labor processes: the optimization and automatization of processes enable companies to carry out their projects in a more efficient way.  Having access to data in diverse platforms in real-time lets employees center on other priorities.

Higher productivity: Intelligent connected technology systems offer the opportunity to automate tasks and processes and thus improve performance. The automation of processes and the intelligence that they can be equipped with will offer clear competitive advantages to companies.

 

Do you want to know how to implement smart manufacturing technologies in your company?

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