Growth Opportunities in Smart Manufacturing

Growth Opportunities in Smart Manufacturing

With the advent of Industry 4.0 and smart factories, digital manufacturing technologies have been experiencing exponential technological growth. Disruptive technologies are playing a vital role in the revolutionary transformation of many key industries, such as aerospace, automotive, industrial automation, healthcare, and oil and gas. 3D printing, advanced robotics, IIoT, and many data-driven technologies are not only redefining manufacturing but also fundamentally reshaping product design.

Industries and manufacturers have adopted these transformative technologies to achieve maximum benefit, in terms of operating profits and achieving sustainability in manufacturing. Data technologies and data analytics define the entire new transformation and revitalization of manufacturing and make it a highly automated and self-sufficient entity. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies drive intelligent automation
and serve as a catalyst that increases productivity in industrial operations.

Monolithic architecture is prevalent in industrial and manufacturing software development and deployment. Rigid and complex, a monolithic application is a large code repository where changes or updates require manual installation and scheduled downtime. Patches released during the release cycle can take months. A single failure can affect the entire application, and the system must recover completely to resume operations.

In increasingly changing and digitalized business environments, business agility and flexibility have become pivotal and rendered monolithic architecture inadequate. AR technology simplifies complex processes by placing the right information in the right place at the right time. It also bridges the gap between the cyber-physical IoT and the real world and creates a composite environment in real time.

Manufacturers are implementing advanced AR technology into their shop floor and assembly processes, to reduce cost, increase efficiency, and improve overall production; this trend is changing the face of manufacturing. AR superimposes holographic images and merges them with the real world and enables workers to identify effective ways to enhance the product design process.