Digital transformation readiness: 7 steps to prepare for IIoT and AI

Manufacturing today faces many challenges including rising operational costs, operational inefficiencies, reduced budgets and the requirement to release products faster. Digital technologies such as AI, cloud, and analytics can enable manufacturers to create a differentiation due to increased productivity and reduced operational risk, while improving product quality and customer satisfaction. 

However, many business processes in today's Manufacturing environment are often full of information gaps. Many large organizations find themselves paralyzed by old IT architectures or legacy systems with the inability to effectively manage manufacturing processes involving multiple datasets between the shop floor and the back office. 

Here is a checklist of preparedness for industrial internet of things (IIoT) and AI that can help assess your organization’s ability to support the factory of the future. 

You might be surprised that something as complex as sourcing components from multiple suppliers and sister factories, including products with long lead times, is still being done using Excel. However, relying on paper processes will prevent the ability to synthesize information from multiple data sources, and to calculate, communicate and compare key performance indicators (KPIs) to continuously improve productivity. 

In many cases, manufacturers still rely on manual processes for quality control and auditing to measure compliance to regulations. Automation is essential not only for saving man hours and reducing product defects, but also for providing the necessary flexibility to adjust to the rapid rate of changes in regulations and new product requirements. 

Many manufacturers suffer from too many operational inefficiencies, such as delays, false starts, and rework, that can be avoided by using real-time data to make better decisions. By using IoT to automatically collect operational data and AI to analyze the results, manufacturers can improve the accuracy of real-time decisions and minimize risk. 

To support the factory of the future there needs to be a manufacturing environment in which shop floor and back office systems can communicate easily and offers real-time access to critical data anywhere in the supply chain on any system. A steady stream of performance and production data needs to be collected, stored, analyzed and shared efficiently, reliably and securely. When systems can communicate seamlessly together an end-to-end process can be optimized. For example, when MES and ERP systems are fully integrated and there is an equipment problem, replacement parts can and a service ticket for a qualified technician can be generated automatically.