In a Machine Design article by Rahul Garg, VP for Industrial Machinery & SMB Programs at Siemens Digital Industries Software, he addresses how smart manufacturing enables industrial companies to tackle the challenges associated with global competition, sustainability, supply chain mishaps and labor shortages.
The objective is efficiency – driving optimum factory utilization. Digitalization is the equalizer to achieving innovative levels of smart manufacturing. Previously, automation was used to reduce costs; however, now digitalization takes the manufacturing process to a new level.
“The foundation for achieving higher operation efficiencies is the convergence of OT and IT to uncover actionable insights,” says Rahul. “Using the wealth of data generated by factory operations technology (OT) from edge sensors and smart equipment, information technology (IT) can then store, retrieve, process, analyze and recommend action based on that digital data.”
And this data leads to a closed-loop manufacturing process that is continually optimized via closed-loop product quality, thus supporting a comprehensive digital twin of the manufacturing environment to maximize throughput.
Read more here.
