A set of highly specific requirements
Like many industries, the Discrete Manufacturing industry – or the manufacturing of discrete items – has a set of highly specific requirements to ensure sustainability and success. To ensure that technology matches the standard for success, you will need technologies that can aid in high quality manufacturing, together with the available workforce.
Supporting processes, like workplace IT, should be able to move towards highly flexible environments in the Cloud, for example Azure Cloud or Office365. The availabe requirements for supporting processes in manufacturing can be matched by the Azure Cloud. Manufacturing a product or part can be divided into primary and secondary processes. Primary is the manufacturing of raw materials, secondary is the part after this which changes these materials into goods. These primary processes, however, are not that easy to entrust onto a remote technology platform. Availability requirements might be ‘5 nines uptime’ or even higher for a primary process. Any unknown interference in the primary process could have a significant impact on production. The immediate effect of this is loss of revenue which on the longer term usually has to be made up for in a shorter timespan, putting even more pressure on a successful primary process.
Last but not least is the ongoing transformation of traditional manufacturing and industrial practises, using modern smart technology.
Machine-to-machine communication (M2M) and the internet of things (IoT) are both important for increased automation and improved communication. It is also a key element for self- monitoring, supporting the production of smart machines by analyzing and detecting issues without any human intervention.
We see the following 4 key opportunities where technology can aid the primary process within the Manufacturing Industry:
- Quality of the process,
aided by the Industrial Internet of Things; - Efficiency of internal logistics,
aided by Automating more than Machines; - Predictive maintenance and process optimization,
aided by Big Data; - Availability of the primary process,
aided by Cloud Computing.
