The factory of the future will not be a cold, dark facility where robots ceaselessly assemble products designed by artificial intelligence. Yes, facilities will be heavily automated and emphasize sustainability, but the technologies and trends shaping electronics manufacturing aim to augment human innovation rather than replace it.
Many of the technologies that improve manufacturing operations – augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR), the IoT the industrial IoT (IIoT), and artificial intelligence (AI) – make factories safer for workers while decreasing costs. Products and factories themselves will be environmentally friendly and will emphasize both cyber and physical security.
DIGITIZATION, THE IOT, AND THE IIOT
Industry 4.0, or digitization, is the foundation of most manufacturing advancements. Factories are getting smarter — the IoT/IIoT enables sensors, applications, and associated networking equipment to work together to collect, monitor, and analyze data from industrial operations. This data, in turn, provides information that can be used to enhance the manufacturing process.
Earlier this year, Microsoft and consumer goods manufacturer Procter & Gamble announced a major digital collaboration. Microsoft’s digital manufacturing system will give P&G’s team access to real-time data and AI models that will help optimize and streamline production. The project incorporates Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s hybrid cloud computing platform, which will allow AI, machine learning, and IIoT technologies to be seamlessly integrated into P&G’s existing infrastructure.
The two companies also plan to incorporate digital twins, which can aid everything from product design to employee training. Digital twins allow companies to conduct virtual “what if” experiments of their production environments without causing disruption. Likewise, digital twins can virtually configure a factory floor and model how workers interact with machines. Employees can train in that virtual setting so they’re fully proficient from day one.
Improving efficiency and productivity are core goals of Industry 4.0.
AR/VR
AR/VR provides a level of human and machine connectivity that blends the creative with the practical. Engineers use VR and AR help to refine and optimize designs at an early stage. Concepts and options can be reviewed, adjusted, and modified quickly. Digital models can also be virtually tested, analyzed, and simulated. The result is rapid iterative design cycles.
VR and AR also make animated simulations possible so developers can see how products will be used over time and allow factors such as ergonomics, access, look, and feel to come into play. 2D drawings or 3D models can’t convey the same experience as a life-like simulation, so manufacturers also use these tools when interfacing with customers.
Ultimately VR and AR aid communication and buy-in during product development. The result is reduced technical risk, with a greater probability components and products will be fit for purpose.
AI AND PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE
Implementing AI in a manufacturing context means using data to make actionable decisions faster and more accurately than a human, according to NIST. It’s the enabling technology behind predictive maintenance, which anticipates how a machine will behave under a future payload and when, why, and how it will need to be fixed based on experience.
These systems are heavily reliant on sensors, which provide data on electrical flow, vibration, temperature, and a variety of metrics that can impact a machine’s performance. Early predictive maintenance solutions alerted people to problems with particular machines; now they identify which component had triggered a notification.
Predictive maintenance reduces factory downtime and related costs, and AI plays a role in quality, scrap reduction, and inventory/demand forecasting.
Using metrics to predict behavior across product specifications can minimize scrap and maximize product quality. Predicting if and when a machine or process will no longer meet given specifications – or drift — enables manufacturers to proactively do what’s needed to bring it back to spec.
With a thorough understanding of plant operations and the data behind production, manufacturers can forecast the demand and movement of critical parts, resulting in significant inventory savings.
Data analysis also makes remote assistance more efficient. Some technicians use smart glasses that capture audio and video evidence of a machine’s behavior and broadcast it live to a support agent. The receiving party can then offer help in various forms, including sending relevant documents or drawings to the customer.
CYBER AND PHYSICAL SECURITY
Manufacturing plants are increasingly connected. They feature intelligent machines that collect data and present meaningful trends. Some facilities feature collaborative robots that work alongside humans to boost productivity. Manufacturers may also have automated systems that allow quick reordering of items before they go out of stock.
Research published in November 2020 showed that manufacturers are under increasing threats from attacks that use encrypted channels to bypass legacy security controls. More specifically, the manufacturing sector faced 1.1 billion of these threats, accounting for 17.4 percent of all such attacks.
A practice called zero trust can be applied to manufacturing, meaning parties never give automatic approval to any entity that tries to access a facility or a network — whether that person is an employee or a manufacturer’s most reliable supplier.
This approach segments data so that only relevant parties can access it. For example, if an entry-level manufacturing floor worker tried to retrieve resources only used by the accounting department, that action would trigger an alert and keep the content locked down until someone reviews the access request and approves or denies it.
Keeping material locked down like that reduces the chances of a massive data breach that puts customer information at risk. A hacker may get access to one data segment or a single resource. However, they’d have to successfully enter numerous others before causing the kind of damage associated with data breaches when companies do not use a zero-trust strategy.
GREEN/SUSTAINABILITY
Sustainability is now a priority for manufacturing and spans several dimensions. The first is the circular economy which gauges a company’s impact on climate and the environment. Then there’s sustainable supply: the long-term viability of vendors, on-hand inventory, and dependable logistics. Many electronics companies are designing products based more on component availability than on price or performance.
Engineering teams are also considering sustainability at the design stage. According to Accenture research, designing products for reuse, resale, repair, refurbishment, and remanufacturing can boost operating profit for a company by 16 percent. In addition, modifying business models for recovery of products can bring up to 35 percent in cost savings, an 80 percent reduction in material losses, and a 45 percent reduction in CO₂ emissions.
However, defining sustainability in high-tech manufacturing is a challenge because it ranges from efforts and resources like mining rare earth materials, transportation, operation, and lifecycle management to environmental systems, power generation, and labor resources. While it seems that every tech company has adopted the sustainability banner, the definition of “sustainable” varies company by company.
Advanced warehouses, for example, have fully automated sections that don’t require light, heat, or humans to pick orders. Newer factories are being built with materials, operations, and footprints that reduce carbon emissions, consume less energy, and use recycled materials.
Products themselves are differentiated through energy efficiency and size. Pure Storage is a provider of enterprise data flash storage solutions designed to substitute for electromechanical disk arrays. It focuses on the all-flash array market which uses significantly less energy than spinning disks. “Even within AFA Pure uses less energy and has a smaller footprint than our competitors,” said Mike Fitzgerald, Pure’s vice president for operations. Pure has reduced the footprint of its storage arrays to the size of a stereo receiver or VCR.
Sustainability must be part of the way a business is run, rather than a CSR initiative, said Soroush Shojaei, program vice president for BINA ELECTRONIC Insights. “That means operating with sustainability principles in mind, not just regulatory or reporting requirements. Companies looking to expand should consider reducing their water usage. If supply chains are entering a protracted period of resource constraints – and there is certainly evidence to suggest that is the case — then sustainable supply will be a critical element of successful companies.”
Shojaei also noted that the enabling technologies in future manufacturing won’t produce the Skynet AI in the movie Terminator that autonomously manufactures killer machines. “Automation is task replacement, not people replacement,” he said. “Smart automation makes sense. It’s a technology like AI that learns from existing data and doesn’t make business decisions. It’s not Skynet.”
