Digital technologies serve as enablers to drive Industry 4.0 outcomes – namely, agile and flexible manufacturing, leaner inventories, optimization of production costs, faster time-to-market, lower machine downtime, and improved predictability despite uncertainty.
What’s keeping manufacturers from realizing Industry 4.0 outcomes?
Thirteen years after the formulation of Industry 4.0, businesses are still chasing the much-desired outcomes of this framework. Industry 4.0 technologies are mature, available in the market and are ready to be exploited by manufacturers at scale. Moreover, the cost barrier for their adoption has trended downward, especially with the proliferation of cloud infrastructure underneath.
So, what is it that’s still holding businesses back from transforming into an Industry 4.0 manufacturing enterprise?
As mentioned earlier, digital technologies serve as enablers for transforming key processes across the product, production, supply chain, production asset, and order-to-cash value chains. Implementing them in a real manufacturing environment requires an orchestrator – a system that can bridge the gap between top-level business planning and the shop floor. This orchestrator is the Manufacturing Execution System (MES).
The problem with legacy MES solutions
MES solutions were first developed in the 90s and 2000s. In other words, these systems were born at the cusp of the 3rd and the 4th industrial revolutions. Primitive in their capabilities, early MES solutions did not offer the capabilities that were needed to rebuild processes with new digital technologies.
At the same time, ERP and SCADA systems continued to evolve in response to the Industry 4.0 framework. However, it was the mass adoption of cloud in the mid-2010s that brought the ultimate shift in the thinking underpinning manufacturing IT and OT systems.
A new Industry 4.0 enabler is born
The last generation of MES solutions has evolved to exploit the potential of digital technologies to advance manufacturing operations management to Industry 4.0 formulations. These MES solutions serve as the backbone for achieving Industry 4.0 outcomes. Here are a few characteristics of Industry 4.0-enabling MES solutions:
- They can be deployed on on-prem systems as well as cloud.
- Offer binding for real-time data and other enterprise systems.
- Provide capabilities to process high-velocity, high-volume IIoT data.
- Embed intelligence into key processes like production scheduling.
- Can guide complex processes along autonomous pathways.
- Drive both horizontal and vertical integration to offer unparalleled visibility.
With these attributes, MES solutions enable manufacturers to move away from fixed and linear conceptions of assets and processes to dynamic, real-time ones. Moreover, because these MES systems are cloud-based, they aggregate data from multiple locations to build a unified, real-time view of manufacturing plants. With vertical integration to the ERP, the MES becomes the crucial link in the chain of digital orchestration. Moreover, with advanced data processing, the MES becomes the site of IIoT data processing, enabling dynamic and automated control of the shop floor, and powering service-oriented internal operations.
So, what are some of the key Industry 4.0 outcomes that are realized with these MES solutions?