In a recent article by Greg Gorbach of ARC in Automation World, he argues that industry should take up new information technologies such as cloud computing, mobile, social technologies, Internet of
Things, big data and analytics in order for manufacturing companies to gain competitive
advantage.
Clearly as a supplier of these types of solutions, we can’t help
agreeing with him! He also goes on to argue that the conservative nature of
traditional manufacturing can be a barrier to adoption and yet postulates that
the manufacturing environment is increasingly “dynamic and volatile”.
Making general comments about industry is always going to be
difficult and so it is valid that evidence can be provided to support contradictory
viewpoints. So where do we see the take up of new information technologies and
what are the motives for this:
- New Product Introduction – situations where our customers are wanting to reduce the time from lab to pilot to full scale manufacturing ; using the technology to enable knowledge transfer
- Complexity – situations where the products being manufactured (and services being supplied) have a process which is too complex to be constantly produced without the use of technology
- New industries/ new thinking – where the customer’s business model is outside of the norm and thus thinking the unthinkable is a way of life
Clearly with the emergence of the trends above we are beyond
the early adopters, the question I would raise is whether these motives are sufficiently strong to push the use of the technology into the traditional
manufacturing which Greg talks about.
Phil Gillard, General Manager, SolutionsPT
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