What does the Future of Manufacturing look like? Will factories comprise only Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled robots? Will supply chains be managed through an Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) technology that seamless links all production steps between and within factories? If workers remain, will their performance be measured on a real time basis through a range of embedded senses that monitor their every move? Are these the likely dystopian outcomes, or is the opposite true? Will the factories of the future be great places to work? Will supply chains be empowered to operate optimally and equitably to the benefit of all industry stakeholders? Will factories and their supply chains become smart spaces, where people and machines interact in mutually beneficial ways?
These are non-trivial questions, and along with many others, lie at the heart of trying to understand what the Future of Manufacturing looks like. A major challenge is that “experts” often hold vastly different positions in respect of the potential answers to these complex questions, frequently confusing (or even startling) Manufacturing Executives with overly positive or negative predictions.
At TWIMS we believe that there are no simple answers to the existential future of manufacturing questions. However, we believe the future will look far more positive if Manufacturing Executives are actively engaging, and becoming comfortable with, the disruptive technologies that are rapidly challenging their existing business models. We group these technologies into four baskets:
- IOT (and IIOT): connecting firms and supply chains (and their products) to markets and each another.
- AI: Enabling machine to machine communication and decision making through IOT enabled connections
- Additive Manufacturing (AM): Additive, as opposed to reductive production models (essentially individualised 3D printing versus mass production), enabling distributed manufacturing.
- Smart materials: Materials with embedded sensors, or nano-scale technologies, allowing them to perform dynamically in relation to stimuli.
As these baskets of technologies develop and mutually reinforce each other in new ways over the next few years, it is incumbent on Executives to better understand each technology, and consider the business model changes they need to make to respond to identified opportunities and/or challenges.
