What is smart manufacturing?

When we talk about smart manufacturing, we’re really talking about data. How? Smart manufacturing uses real-time data—and data-driven technologies like AI and the IIoT—to automatically adapt to changes in customer demand and business needs. It uses data from machines and sensors to optimise production, improve quality, and keep equipment running smoothly. And it uses data from across the supply chain to foresee disruption, sidestep issues, and keep the company’s promises to customers.

Definition of smart manufacturing

The NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) defines smart manufacturing as: “ fully-integrated, collaborative manufacturing systems that respond in real time to meet changing demands and conditions in the factory, in the supply network, and in customer needs”.

Smart manufacturing is grounded in cloud connectivity. It is a combination of human creativity, digitally connected machines and assets, and AI-powered systems and analytics. The integration of AI and smart tools helps fuel adaptability and speeds up the capacity to customise outputs based upon real-time data and intel. The visibility, agility, and resilience of smart manufacturing makes it a cornerstone of more efficient supply chain models and overall business operations.

Learn about some of the benefits of smart manufacturing.

History: From Industry 1.0 to Industry 4.0 manufacturing

Industry 4.0 refers to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The word “Revolution” is used because each Industrial Revolution has been powered by some kind of game-changing technology or invention that “revolutionised” the entire industrial world. The First Industrial Revolution used steam; the Second, electricity; the Third was driven by basic automation and computing power; and the Fourth is powered by cyber-physical systems and intelligent technologies.

Today’s smart manufacturing is not about tearing down traditional factories and replacing them with something else. It’s about improving existing factories step by step and enhancing them with the best tools and solutions to achieve their manufacturing goals more efficiently and effectively.

Top 5 benefits of smart manufacturing

Amidst unprecedented competition, today’s businesses need to look at more than just profit as a measure of success. Long-term stability and customer loyalty arise from benefits that are felt across your business—from your customers, to your staff, and even environmentally.

1. Efficiency and productivity: With automation, real-time data analytics, and integrated manufacturing solutions, your teams can work faster, smarter, and more safely. Predictive maintenance and automated workflows can help your IoT connected machines and assets operate at peak level with more streamlined outputs.
2. Agility and responsiveness: At each stage in the process, smart manufacturing solutions and data analytics allow you to respond quickly to market changes—pivoting your manufacturing workflows and personalising your products with speed and acuity.
3. Sustainability: The data gathered by smart manufacturing technologies can help enact strategic and cost-effective plans to streamline operations and reduce energy usage. From sustainable product design to greener logistics, smart solutions can support your sustainable initiatives.
4. Improved quality control: From the frustration of bad reviews to the catastrophe of a product recall, smart manufacturing solutions can integrate across your supply chain and manufacturing operations, to ensure that quality standards are visible and verifiable at every stage.
5. End-to-end savings: Digital integration from one end of your supply chain to the other, allows for better forecasting, inventory management, and logistic solutions. This means fewer risks, less spending and—best of all—happier customers.

Smart manufacturing technologies

Critical considerations such as cyber security and strategic business integration are all part of the digital transformation landscape. But below, we will just look at the most foundational technologies that underpin smart manufacturing practices.

• IoT/IIoT: When devices and machines are equipped to send and receive digital data, they comprise an IoT network. Data sent from the device reports on its status and activity, and data sent to the device controls and automates its actions and workflows. An Industrial IoT (IIoT) network is at the core of smart manufacturing as it not only comprises the connected assets, but the smart systems and automated processes with which they are integrated.
• AI/Machine Learning: The most comprehensive data in the world is meaningless until you can leverage it and use it to tell a story. AI brings manufacturing data to life with advanced analytics and the inherent ability to manage and amalgamate broad and disparate data sets. Manufacturers armed with all that data can then use machine learning algorithms to get their systems to tell them what they need to know—about what’s going on right now, and what is predicted to happen in the future.
• Big Data: If AI and machine learning put the “smart” in smart manufacturing, then Big Data is the fuel. Big Data is not so-called simply because it’s voluminous. It’s defined by its variety and complexity. By feeding an AI system with enormous sets of complex and disparate manufacturing data, you give it the scope it needs to draw increasingly accurate conclusions and learn more quickly over time.
• Autonomous robots: As already discussed, robotics is nothing new in manufacturing. It is not the ability to externally automate assets that is the game-changer—it’s the ability for those cloud-connected assets to use smart technologies to automate themselves. Smart factories depend upon autonomous automation for the agility and speed that they require.
• Additive manufacturing/hybrid manufacturing: Better known as 3D printing, additive manufacturing enhances resilience and agility. For example, a Boeing 747 jet is made up of over six million parts—all of which require replacement on different schedules. Instead of trying to warehouse all those parts, smart metal or plastic 3D printers can access the maintenance logs and produce the parts as needed, allowing the company to hold a “virtual inventory”.
• Cloud computing: Cloud connectivity and computing provide manufacturers with on-demand availability of system resources such as IIoT data, analytics, and process automations, all across wireless channels like Wi-Fi or 5G. Large clouds may be centrally managed yet distributed over regional or global locations.
• 5G connectivity: With 5G, businesses take the advantages and benefits of internet cloud connectivity and ramp them up with less latency, much faster speeds, and almost limitless capacity to scale.
• Edge computing: Today’s smart factories are all about pivoting fast and responding quickly in real time. It takes time to send data gathered in one place, to systems housed in another physical location—and for smart factories, that downtime represents loss. Edge computing helps to bring the brains (AI and data analytics) to the shop floor and eliminate delays in the IoT network.
• Simulation/digital twin: A digital twin or simulation is created to be an identical virtual copy of a machine or process that exists in the real world. It allows manufacturing teams to test new ways of doing things, and to push virtual prototypes to their absolute limits, without the cost and risk of damaging anything in real life.
• Design for manufacturing: This is not so much a technology itself as it is a cross-functional practice that exists because of technology. Design for manufacturing principles allow R&D professionals to learn from data—from across the factory floor and customer base. These insights then help them design win/win products that meet customer demands for quality and personalisation, and create designs that are also easier, leaner, and faster to manufacture and customise.

Automated manufacturing vs. autonomous manufacturing

Automated manufacturing is nothing new. It simply refers to robotic devices that are programmed with the sole purpose of performing a specific action. Most often, these repetitive tasks occur in concert with other machines and humans in an environment such as a production line. Automation is essential in delivering the speed and accuracy needed for high-volume manufacturing.

Autonomous manufacturing is essentially just automated manufacturing… with a brain. Using Industry 4.0 technologies like AI and machine learning, a smart manufacturing system and the IoT devices within it, capture disparate data sets like consumer feedback, supply and demand, machine capacity, and any other relevant information. Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms can then be applied to those data sets to deliver—and automatically enact—more efficient and optimised workflows and processes.

Examples of smart manufacturing in action

See how some of the world’s most innovative companies are leveraging software solutions to optimise and streamline their manufacturing and supply chain operations:

• Leonhart Group: Cloud-based smart solutions deliver visibility, productivity, and security. Scalable systems support growth and responsiveness to business opportunities.
• A.M.P.E.R.E: Automated processes across the supply chain and live foreign exchange and stock updates allow for speedy price calculations and just-in-time order fulfilment.
• Geographe: Transparency and real-time data mean better response to customer needs, more confident predictive analytics, and optimised supply chains and production.
• Yanmar Marine: cross-enterprise automation and standardisation facilitate cross-business communication and visibility—leading to greater innovation and productivity.
• Smart Press Shop: Increased efficiency and supply chain resilience with smarter, more sustainable automotive component manufacturing.

Smart manufacturing implementation: Next steps

Some businesses have already travelled quite far down the path of digital transformation, integrating a wide range of Industry 4.0 technologies into their operations. Others are just beginning their journey or wondering where they should start.

The good news is that the best smart manufacturing solutions meet you wherever you are, helping you to initiate or continue your journey—with standalone solutions or cloud-based ERP with embedded functionality.

And finally, before you begin this process, remember to include your most valuable manufacturing asset: Your people. Put together solid communication and change management strategies to ensure that all your teams are enthusiastic, empowered, and informed about the exciting improvements to come.