Connected Enterprise

Multiple aspects of digital growth form the foundation for Connected Enterprise which is being used in various industry verticals and is transforming the production process by making it fully automated, integrated and optimized resulting in increased efficiency and customer experience along with suppliers and producers’ ecosystem.  Some of these trends which plays an important role in shaping of connected enterprise are the likes of Big Data Analytics, Autonomous Robots, Simulation, Cyber security and additive manufacturing.

Big Data and Analytics

Data Analytics dependent on huge informational data source has emerged recently in the manufacturing organization, where it optimizes production quality, energy savings and improves equipment reliability. In a connected enterprise setting, the gathering and exhaustive assessment of information from a wide range of sources like assembly line and shop floor equipment’s along with software and technologies help the organization in making real time decision faster and efficient.  This can also be used for reducing product failures by capturing the data from the production to quality assurance stage and its behaviour pattern which will help the organization to reduce failures and will improve the quality of the product.

Autonomous Robots

Many organizations have started using robots to handle their complex operations and task and the robots are getting evolved and matured with more and more data coming to play.  The process gets sharpen with regular data feeds and this leads to the next level of technology evolution with autonomous robots coming to live and which works with cognitive behaviour acting as a human brain.  Eventually these autonomous robots work and interact with one another and work side by side as if they are human being and they even learn from the data which gets generated in the process.  They are interconnected with each other and automatically adjust their actions to fit in the decision-making process.  Sensors and control units enable these robots to collaborate with the humans.  Eventually these robots will become more cost effective and will have greater range of capabilities than those used in the industry today.

Machine Simulation

In product engineering during conceptualization and design phase of the product life cycle, the 3D simulations of the components and production process is already been used, but in near future we will see it more extensively to be used in manufacturing operations.  The simulation technology will use real time data coming out of the plant operations to simulate the actual scenario in a virtual model which can include the combination of equipment’s, products and operators.  This will help the machine operators to simulate and optimize the equipment settings for next production run on the assembly line in a virtual mode before starting the physical and actual process.  The entire simulation process will help the operator to increase line productivity and decrease the equipment setup time.

Cyber Security

Still we are emerging on the adoption of change for industrial revolution and thus we have lot of industries which still uses unconnected or closed loop process for their production ecosystem.  With a revolution in the connectivity and network and with launch of various communication protocols which comes with connected enterprise, the need to protect the industrial equipment’s, machineries, robots and tools from the risk of cyber threats increases drastically.   As a result, the need for secure, reliable and approved network along with identity and access management of machines and users becomes very important. 

Additive Manufacturing

Different industry verticals have started using and adopting the likes of additive manufacturing like 3D printing which is largely being used to prototype the design of individual components.  In manufacturing industry, these additive methods is being used to produce a small lot of custom products and designs.   Companies like aerospace uses to prototype the additive manufacturing for the spares which are being used in the aircrafts and technology has taken this to a level, wherein the healthcare industry is using this method for prototyping the human organs for research purpose.

At last it will be fair to state that, there is a growing understanding that Connected enterprise technologies are not just for the big manufacturing setup, instead it is being widely used by various other industry verticals and most importantly by the small and medium enterprise due to its ever-decreasing cost of deployment.