By Lim Boon Choon, President of Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence for Korea, ASEAN, Pacific
Digital transformation is a new process of reimagining business in the digital age. While many businesses have made digital transformation commitments, a linear mindset is largely holding back progress. Fundamentally, the industrial landscape today has to accept that strategy is no longer a single, unchanging roadmap. Expanding regulations, new technologies, and rising customer expectations are just some of the complexities that manufacturers confront.
It has become the basis for achieving short-term performance gains, capturing higher manufacturing efficiency, and building a competitive advantage through innovation. It now requires agility to make the most of the convergence of powerful macroeconomic forces, technological disruption, and shifting market dynamics.
In today’s manufacturing landscape, manufacturers need resilience and collaborative agility to build the factory of the future. This involves optimizing specific dimensions, such as focusing on digitization and automation to improve efficiency. Additionally, it includes implementing lean processes to improve plant operations and designing a strategic framework to increase flexibility and agility, all to achieve continuous improvement.
This is particularly clear through Nexus platform, which significantly enhances operational agility and smarter decision-making, as evidenced in the aerospace industry in complex assembly environments. Notably, leading innovators in aerospace and defense are already reaping substantial benefits from data-centric technologies.
The implementation of digital solutions for example has led to impressive gains: there is a 7% to 10% enhancement in throughput, a significant reduction in labour by 25% to 40%, and an improvement in asset efficiency by 15% to 20%. Additionally, the solutions have demonstrated measurable improvements, reducing production time by 10% and defects by 20%. These advancements highlight the transformative impact of digital transformation and integration as key drivers in more intelligent manufacturing, promoting both innovation and efficiency.
Despite this, only 13% of companies in ASEAN report that they have begun an Industry 4.0 transformation. This highlights an urgent need for strategic initiatives to bridge this gap, which would unlock significant productivity gains and cost savings.
Digital Transformation Strategies Tailored to Industry Needs
The advantage of smart manufacturing is complicated because it is multi-dimensional. This sparks an interesting debate: should this complexity be viewed as a challenge to overcome, or as an integral part of the innovation journey? As industry perceptions shift, recognizing the evolving value and importance of Industry 4.0 technologies, the need for digital transformation strategies tailored to specific industry needs becomes increasingly relevant. Such strategies might include customizing digital solutions to enhance efficiency or adopting new technologies to stay competitive.
This discussion extends to the role of industry-specific software solutions that aim to integrate precision measurement with digital tools. The integration of metrology with digital technologies is crucial for achieving higher precision and efficiency. By seamlessly integrating these technologies, ASEAN manufacturers could offer valuable insights into the unfolding narrative of digital transformation in manufacturing, potentially setting new benchmarks for the industry worldwide.
The Role of Nexus in the Smart Factory Ecosystem
To get a clear picture of the industry’s progress in turning quality into a source of advantage, the Nexus platform presents an intriguing case study in the evolving landscape of smart factory ecosystems. Its open, cloud-based architecture is a key feature, enabling broader accessibility and integration for an end-to-end manufacturing solution. This design allows the seamless incorporation of both Hexagon and third-party technologies, enhancing its potential as a technology that embodies the concept of ‘Connected Quality’. As a result, the potential for innovations to break down traditional silos becomes more pronounced, especially in areas like additive manufacturing.
This could lead to more seamless collaboration among engineers, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of manufacturing processes. It’s also worth considering how these approaches might streamline processes and protect intellectual property, potentially marking a step forward in the technological evolution of the manufacturing sector.
With the greater freedom provided by the Nexus platform, innovating and meeting manufacturing productivity and sustainability challenges becomes more achievable. The platform simplifies integrating solutions like ETQ, which enhances compliance and quality management, and Q-DAS, geared towards statistical process control for quality consistency. This integration streamlines operations and elevates manufacturing efficiency to a whole new level.
Moreover, it fosters improved decision-making, minimizes defects and non-conformities, and facilitates continuous improvement throughout the product lifecycle. Real-world applications of our solutions, like Nexus Connected Worker, demonstrate the practical benefits of our approach. Nexus Connected Worker is a digital tool that enhances the efficiency of field and factory workers by providing real-time data access, task management, and communication capabilities. This feature helps in optimizing workflows and improving safety and productivity. For instance, by digitalizing inspection processes, Airstream was able to dramatically cut down quality reporting time, showcasing the efficiency gains possible with our systems.
The Digital Thread and Operational Innovation
Going beyond traditional manual processes and isolated systems in smart manufacturing, the ‘digital thread’ supercharges efficiency and effectiveness in key steps of factory operations. With Nexus acting as a central component, it creates an environment where data flows seamlessly through a factory, from the initiation to the completion of a product or process. It connects all digital information, making it easier for everyone involved to access and understand it. Adopting this approach reduces errors, boosts efficiency, and is crucial for digital transformation in manufacturing. Unlike traditional models, it allows data to be interconnected across different areas, providing a more complete view of the factory and its activities.
To cite just a few digital possibilities, the transformation of the shop floor through smart technologies, integrating sensors, software, and autonomous systems, has evolved from a futuristic ideal to an emerging trend. They are reshaping the manufacturing floor for greater efficiency and accuracy, making intelligent quality and continuous learning integral to the production process.
Ultimately, to compete effectively in the future, manufacturers need to rethink what’s possible today. On the opportunity side, game-changing digital transformation towards a more connected, efficient, and automated future entails not only boosting productivity in factories but also reducing their environmental footprint. As manual roles evolve, our vision and leadership are at the forefront of this wave of digital innovation in manufacturing intelligence. Digital solutions like Nexus will become deeply integrated, as these foundational dimensions directly align with the key attributes that enable a future-built factory.
