The world of manufacturing is going through a major shift and there is an increasing trend towards the adoption of Smart Manufacturing. As per a latest research by McKinsey, Smart Manufacturing is a top priority for 70% of the companies.

Smart Manufacturing is the intelligent, real-time orchestration and optimization of business and manufacturing processes within factories and across the entire value chain with the objective of identifying inefficiencies in existing manufacturing operations and optimizing them continuously.

Though Smart Manufacturing is expected to provide major benefits, there are multiple challenges faced by Plant Managers when they embark on their smart manufacturing journey. Some such challenges are:

• Selecting the right use cases: Too many options can be very confusing. There are multiple use cases with different risks, complexity, and ROI in different areas such as operational efficiency, supply chain, workforce, and utility effectiveness.
• Articulating ROI to internal stakeholders: There are multiple direct/indirect as well as tangible/intangible hidden benefits of the different use cases which need to be explained to the internal stakeholders to achieve 100% support for this transformational journey.
• Selecting the right technology: The implementation of Smart Manufacturing requires integration of multiple technologies with different technology options such as type of Field Devices, Connectivity, Cloud, IoT Platform, etc. Selecting the right technology components to achieve the required performance can be quite challenging.
• Selecting the right implementation models: There are choices involved in all the implementation steps of the Smart Manufacturing journey such as team structure (in-house vs outsource vs hybrid), deployment (Cloud/on-premises), etc.

The key to success of Smart Manufacturing initiatives depends on identifying the right use cases which help in demonstrating quick ROI wins.

Sasken’s Smart Manufacturing Proposition:
Sasken follows a unique a first-time right approach to enable Smart Manufacturing for its customers. After conducting a detailed analysis, we have divided the Smart Manufacturing use case landscape into three categories as detailed below:

• 1st Category: Low risk, clear ROI (real-time visibility of inventory, worker safety monitoring, etc.)
• 2nd Category: Medium risk, high ROI (asset performance management, machine vision quality inspection, etc.)
• 3rd Category: High risk, unclear ROI (autonomous machine recalibration, automated material movement, etc.)

The objective of categorizing the use cases is to increase the probability of success of Smart Manufacturing transformation by focusing, first, on low-risk use cases with a minimum ROI of 30-60% and a shorter execution time of three to eight months. This will help you demonstrate business value from early successes and gain buy-in for future findings.

Sasken can be your single window partner taking ownership of all aspects such as Consulting, Design, Development, Deployment, and Maintenance of your Smart Manufacturing solutions. We begin the Smart Manufacturing journey with a discovery workshop where we do a factory survey to identify the right use cases and solutions, estimate the ROI, and freeze on the cost and schedule. Post the discovery phase, pilot deployment of the selected solutions/solution can be done in full ownership mode by Sasken. After the initial success, we can then implement the same solution/solutions in other factories and start implementing other solutions in the pilot factory.