During the past few years, digital technologies timidly started emerging in the industry, paving the way to what is known as the 4th industrial revolution.
The idea behind it is to integrate computer automation and digital technologies on the whole industrial value chain. The goal? There isn’t a single one, but many. The main ones include:
Digitalization comes at a slower pace for industrial players. It is lagging behind in oil & energy, manufacturing, and transportation industries, especially when compared with other industries like electronics, automotive or general retail.
This new era comes however with endless possibilities offered by many technologies and solutions. Here are some of them:
The 4th Industrial Revolution is already a reality. Thousands of companies are integrating new, digital tools that are and will undoubtedly transform the industry as we know it. Here are a few companies that are leading the way.
Airbus is an important aerospace company that also works in defense areas. For the past two years, they have been piloting the use of drones for advanced indoor and outdoor aircraft inspection, in order to reduce inspection times and increase the report quality. They have also implemented a platform developed by the company to send support requests to Airbus engineers and leverage their expertise in short times to address frequent issues across airlines and improve their operations. The goal is to anticipate maintenance, ease immediate problem fixing, and provide visibility on critical data. Delta, easyjet, or Air Asia airlines are among their customers, with some of them managing to reduce up to 13 million in fuel spending, reducing disruption and increasing reliability of aircrafts.
Continental AG is one of the biggest tires and auto parts manufacturing businesses in Europe. During the past few years, they have implemented different solutions aiming at optimizing production. One of their initiatives was to integrate automated guided vehicles that help keep the warehouse clean by removing trash and picking up spare parts that have been previously ordered. They have also implemented a smooth system that enables machines to connect between them using IoT (Internet of Things). This resulted in a reduction of machine issues, as the connection between machines enables a self-analysis and problem-solving process.
Plastic manufacturing companies like Nova Chemicals are also going digital. In order to improve their work order flow in their resin manufacturing facilities across the globe, they introduced an advanced analytics solution to improve maintenance flows and reduce the burden caused by the large annual number of work orders. Predictive maintenance has reduced emergency interventions by almost a half. They also developed an internal app called Bonfire to let designers virtually create models of plastic film structures and predict how the resulting product will perform. The outcome has been positive, with a decrease in the number of trials that have led to cost and time savings.
Aichelin is a 150-year-old industrial furnace manufacturer operating worldwide. It provides industrial burner systems and has a maintenance team dedicated to servicing spare parts, updating the system, and keeping machines up and running.
Not long ago they launched a project focused on digitalizing their business by means of implementing a digital service app accessible by all Aichelin technicians and service workers. The application, provided by part recognition leader Partium gathers all relevant technical information about furnaces in a single, easy-to-access platform. The idea is to assist and give direct access to technicians to documentation, user manuals, module visualization, machine status, and part availability, as well as part recognition from user pictures, all from a smartphone or tablet. This reduces the time technicians spent finding the manuals, walking to a distant room where documentation is kept and reduces the fuss by centralizing machine and part information.
Sources:
Digital Factories 2020: Shaping the Future of Manufacturing. PWC, 2020. 1
Prepare for the Impact of Digital Twins. Gartner, 2017. 2