The age of smart manufacturing is here. According to the International Federation of Robotics, there is an all-time high of half a million new industrial robots installed in 2021 across global factories. Given its importance to future success, the International Data Corporation forecasts global digital transformation spending to reach US$3.4 trillion ($4.54 trillion) in 2026, with 30% coming from the discrete and process manufacturing industries.
This is amid key challenges faced by the industry. For one, it is facing a serious global crunch of labour shortages, with the US alone expected to have 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030. The cost of these missing jobs could potentially total US$1 trillion, according to a study by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute.
While companies have amassed “best of breed” tools over many years to address the key challenges in the space, they tend to deploy tools that do not speak the same language. This results in blurring traceability, leading to disconnected silos in terms of processes and data, says Dassault Systèmes’s 3DExperience Works executive vice president Gian Paolo Bassi.
These data silos can discourage collaborative work among teams, preventing agility as well as leading to a lack of coordination and inefficiency within manufacturing facilities, he adds. “Digital continuity does not mean a lot of digital tools patched together. It means continuity across workflows without any loss of information as well as a true common language across disciplines,” he explains.
This is especially important as manufacturing is often the most capital-intensive part of production, crucial in materialising innovative designs. “In 2021, [Tesla CEO] Elon Musk famously said that ‘design is overrated, manufacturing is underrated’. This is because Tesla was plagued for many years by manufacturing issues. Even not too long ago, it struggled to scale up production to fulfil the growing demand — that is not a design problem, it is a manufacturing problem. Manufacturing is hard and getting harder,” says Bassi.
One of the ways digital continuity can be achieved is by adopting a holistic manufacturing-centric enterprise resource planning software. This allows companies to gain visibility and control to aid in analysing past performance as well as predict future scenarios to make real-time decisions. Among other benefits, deploying the software eliminates unnecessary downtime, allows for consistent and timely communication across the supply chain, and identifies any bottlenecks that may affect the production schedule.
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“We think that optimising manufacturing is increasingly important because it will make a difference in the success and profitability of a product in fulfilling market demands,” adds Bassi.
Smart manufacturing in Asia Pacific
Historically, Asia Pacific has some of the largest manufacturing hubs in the world, fuelled by cheap and abundant labour on top of the low cost of goods and services. In 2020, the region accounted for 43% of the global general manufactured goods market. Aside from China, these manufacturing hubs reside in Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines where the manufacturing industry contributes more than 20% of their GDPs.
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That said, the region’s manufacturing and supply chain industry is seen to be lagging in digital transformation. In a survey done by Asean Innovation Business Platform and Oracle, almost half of the respondents believe their companies fell behind the industry average when it comes to utilising digital tools and automation as part of their business processes.
Bassi says that the adoption of cutting-edge manufacturing-centric software is important for players in Asia Pacific. This includes incorporating a digital twin, referring to the virtual representation of a manufacturer’s physical assets. A digital twin is a dynamic, data-supported framework used to achieve design, operational and business efficiencies.
The region is home to many consumer goods manufacturers, which are subject to high raw material price sensitivity. Artificial intelligence-based digital twin software can help solve this problem as it can correlate many factors and indices to present users with actionable insights. For example, the software can predict the probability of surging silicone prices based on GDP and Purchasing Managers Index forecasts, says Bassi. Additionally, software like 3DExperience Works does not require complex IT infrastructure to adopt, he adds.
Staying competitive
Closer to home, there is a huge opportunity for manufacturers in Southeast Asia to adopt smart manufacturing and digital twin technologies, even for the smaller original equipment manufacturers, says Bassi.
“I think there is a misconception that the small players are not sophisticated. From my experience, they are more sophisticated and advanced due to their agility and ability to innovate. This is because they have to have very strong survival skills in a competitive environment,” he adds.
In fact, many large players in the region’s manufacturing industry are not vertically integrated. They need a value network fulfilled by highly specialised small and medium-sized players, says Bassi. “We do see the adoption of highly sophisticated simulation technologies in small companies within Southeast Asia. One example is a company that manufactures medical equipment and devices. To be certified in many parts of the world, medical equipment and devices manufacturers will need to ensure that their products do not fail clinical trials — this involves the ability to accurately predict its reliability using advanced technologies.”
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Another example is in semiconductor manufacturing, where precision is key. Therefore, many smaller semiconductor manufacturers are already deploying sophisticated technology such as a digital twin to ensure continuous delivery of high-quality products that allow them to stay ahead of the competition.
Meanwhile, in the electric vehicle industry which is up and coming in Southeast Asia, digital twin technology helps to accelerate development when they are applied in the evaluation and communication of mobility concepts as well as the design and simulation of supporting systems such as applications and infrastructure.
In Singapore, one of the companies that have adopted the technology is airline gateway services and food solutions provider Sats. The company uses Dassault Systèmes’s 3DExperience platform on the cloud to create a 3D digital twin of a virtual kitchen that pairs virtual and physical operations to provide data-driven analytics for better resource planning.
The virtual kitchen captures and integrates all process data and information into one 3D virtual environment, enabling operation managers to respond quickly and efficiently to changing situations. This, in turn, boosts Sats’s operational efficiency and minimises food wastage.
Moving forward, Bassi believes digital continuity, safety and the ease of deployment of cloud will continue to empower manufacturers in a challenging business environment. “I hope that we can see larger adoption as we move further beyond Industry 4.0,” he concludes.
