TECH TALK
of the manufacturing and supply
chain process.
4. Advanced Manufacturing
Automation
Fully automated manufacturing
and supply chain processes are the
ultimate potential enabled by IoT.
If asset performance management,
guaranteed uptimes and custom apps,
are all developments that provide
better visibility and insight into
manufacturing processes, the next
step is control.
Instead of information being pushed
one way—from device to cloud-
based analytics—the reverse flow
of information enables devices to
automatically adjust their operations
based on conditions. IoT devices won’t
just be sources of information, but
interconnected, remotely-adjustable
extensions of intelligent manufacturing.
In the end, the holy grail of industrial
manufacturing is to have a complete
feedback loop between real-time
information, analytics, command and
control—sensing and responding all
via interconnected data streams.
Tarik Taman, General Manager IMEA, Infor
An End-to-End, Holistic Vision
Picture an order change coming into a
manufacturer. It arrives via a cloud-
based information platform, with an
approval by the production manager.
The request for changes goes straight
to the factory’s production equipment,
located across the globe. These smart
machines are equipped with chips and
sensors that are networked together.
Across vast distances, these machines
talk to each other, assess one
another’s capacity, and coordinate
with machines in other geographies to
determine the most efficient method
to produce the order change.
Big Data analytics take into
consideration the existing workload,
stress and capacity of equipment,
the final destination of the goods,
transportation costs, delivery times
and overall profitability. Then, the
entire system automatically optimises
operations, and begins altering
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production by pushing control changes right to the smart manufacturing
equipment. Any further refinements made on-the-fly are updated across the
entire supply chain, so that stakeholders halfway across the world immediately
know that their changes are happening.
This end-to-end, holistic vision is what IoT brings to industry.
Many companies are already experimenting with portions of this long-term
vision. And yet, for companies who still haven’t begun, the biggest obstacle
remains information-sharing infrastructure.
Companies often implement systems with their own four walls of enterprise in mind.
Sometimes, it goes further—restricted to a department or a division. But with
today’s manufacturing being complex and distributed, and with 80% of supply
chain data residing with trading partners, companies need to start thinking of
information flow as a multi-division, multi-enterprise problem.
This requires creating a data infrastructure that can connect all parts of
a manufacturing supply chain together. Once that happens, piloting and
experimenting with different IoT projects in smaller chunks becomes easier.
By 2025, the total global worth of IoT technology could reach up to $6.2 trillion.
Businesses who don’t want to lose out need to start gearing up now. ¡
www.intelligentcio.com