Wishing for more Clarity in Manufacturing Information Technology for 2018

I can start to see the fog lifting in 2018 from over blown value claims and concerns bolstered over the last two years about implementing new information technology in manufacturing. I believe there is good reason to be excited about the potential of implementing new highly efficient practices, but I am hoping to see more clarity and better understanding of true scenarios, value, and effort to leverage applicable technologies that have become practical to implement in recent years. I am especially optimistic on more clarity in the following five areas:

• Security and governance concerns will not to be insurmountable
  • IT will start pushing back against the unmanageable wave of custom apps appearing at the shop floor. It is easy to build an app with the tools available. But what about security? What about architecting connectivity and data sharing? The current wave of apps is similar to the wave of spreadsheets introduced in the ‘70s when the PC first hit the shop floor. We are creating a myriad of data silos and custom apps that might help for some local optimization but do not necessarily advance the global optimization of the enterprise. IT governance and guidance is required. 
  • Standard approaches to bridging OT and IT networks will emerge. Many stakeholders are working on these types of solutions and the necessary security schemes to connect plant floor operational technology (OT) equipment to enterprise IT systems.
• Manufacturing Apps will be seen as complementary and not as replacement for MES
  • We will see a renaissance of MES. As late 2017 polls indicate, MES is at the top of manufacturers list for implementation because the success stories are abundant, and the word gets out. Do you need a Super MES or MES 4.0? Not really, all you need is a good MES for your specific industry.
  • There will be new UIs coming out and many MES will get a facelift thanks to the responsive and adaptive UI platforms available. Augmented Reality will become part of the UI landscape as AR instructions authoring becomes more practical for specific use cases.
• Hype over IoT/IIoT Platforms will be replaced by better understanding of good use cases.
  • The practical availability of connected sensors and machines coupled with platforms that can collect, visualize, distribute, and analyze this information is a great opportunity for manufacturing. However, it doesn’t mean we throw everything away and start over either. The new connectivity and platforms enable better and quicker data to be leveraged into improved business processes enabled by new cloud services and integrated enterprise systems including ERP, MES and PLM.
• Hype about AI/Analytics/Machine Learning will lead to better understanding of the different technologies under this category and their different use cases
  • There will be a higher demand for people that understand manufacturing data structures and have data science skills
  • There will be more realistic expectations for the use of unstructured data in manufacturing.
  • Manufacturers will uncover that the great value of higher connectivity is not in pursuing better intelligence, it is in pursuing better orchestration and process optimization that leads to reduced cycle time and increased flexibility. A higher level of business intelligence is a great side effect. 
• Fear of Robots will be replaced by sensible views on robots as helpers at the shop floor
  • Instead of taking over all manufacturing jobs, robot use will increase for work that is highly repetitive, high precision, and unsafe.
  • In many instances, robots will be helping the human worker instead of completely replacing the worker.
  • We will start to see more robots in managerial functions. Helping managers as sidekicks providing the pre-processing of the enormous amount of data that the factory will generate.

Better understanding of the value and use of these technology building blocks in a future Smart Manufacturing architecture will help accelerate their adoption. The initial hype has opened minds to the potential, but the momentum can fade if we don’t quickly follow with practical examples and guidance on how to thread these technologies together for high impact changes.

Comments

[Conrad]

This article shares some of the same insights
ttp://cerasis.com/2018/01/17/trends-in-american-manufacturing/