Industry 4.0
Industry 4.0 is the so called 4th industry revolution that signifies the convergence of Physical & Digital by adoption of disruptive digital technologies to make everything smart about Product (bringing in new experiences), plant (connecting the enterprise resources through Autonomous Things) & after market (serving with increased agility at PoS.. Market is enforcing Businesses to launch new variant of product that offer value adds & enhanced experiences at competitive prices. This is mandating modernisation of plants and after market that can generated new value added services to make this happen.
Driving factors:
Virtually Connected Buyer’s Market:
Quicker Time to Market through the use of virtual reality gadgets
Mixed Reality helping bring Agility in Product Life Cycle Management:
IoT powered VR solutions in supply chain management:
In the new era of Industry 4.0 driven by Physical & Digital convergence, the enterprises are dissolving boundaries through Connected Customer, Connected product & Connected Services. This is making plants/manufacturing units capable of autonomous, virtual & remote exchange of information, that trigger real time actions/events and help address customer choices/preferences, production processes for better quality, speed to deliver & value added services. Plexus solutions can help industries to improve their supply chain practices. AR solutions can help navigate & do route optimization for transportation & vehicle scheduling. This will also improve the efficiency of the field force and assist them in visualizing & following the complex procedures remotely.
Training in a virtual environment:
Working in an assembly line or in a workshop always has risk associated with it for the worker. This risk is increased even further if the worker is a recruit and don’t have much experience with machines and tools. Virtual reality will help a worker to practice in a virtual environment by interacting with its nearby tools and machines. He will be able to grasp all the operations of the plant in the virtual world and learn the proper way of performing a task. This will also reduce the cost associated with real-life training and eliminate the risk regarding machine failure.
Designing in a virtual environment:
Virtual Reality also encourages designing in a simulated environment. By wearing a head-mounted display a user can recreate a manufacturing line in the virtual world, and locate potential hazard points even before the component is developed in real life. Designing parts in a virtual environment will also reduce the cost associated with building a prototype or model of the component, and allow the user to eliminate errors in the design itself.
Maintenance and Inspection through AR:
Inspecting and maintaining the quality of an assembly/manufacturing has become quite easier through augmented and virtual reality solutions. An inspection specialist with a mixed reality headset like HoloLens can visit its facility and safely inspect and conduct routine maintenance of equipment by following the instructions visible on the screen. This will also allow the quality inspector to conduct frequent inspections easily, at a low cost. A virtual walk-through of the workshop can be performed more frequently by an expert.
Evolving New Services
Customer’s customer becomes part of the new “Ecosystem”. there is a new “As a Services Economy” – Product as Services, Data as Services, Manufacturing as a Services. Manufacturing has to become agile to respond to customer’s feedback. Customized products/services. 3D printing will be “new normal” & there will be a quantum shift from mass production to batch production where “batch” is “one unit”.
Artificial Intelligence:
The power of AI thinking and learning will help machines to learn from the existing data and enable them to predict the future outcomes with near 100% accuracy to forecast the future decisions of the organization and help in improving sales forecast, production planning in the industry. Business Intelligence & AI in SCM will help bring insight in business value creation & productivity improvement.
IoT:
IoT requires a comprehensive ecosystem to leverage the best-of-breed and industry graded disparate solutions, using disruptive technologies and platform to meet customer expectation and industry 4.0 needs. The ecosystem needs an engagement platform to collaborate where industry focused technology solutions can be co-sourced & assembled to deliver a successful digital transformation programs for customers. Plexus enables customers, partners, start-ups and developer communities to quickly establish, demonstrate and monazite AR/VR powered, enterprise grade IoT-based applications in a secure, configurable and scalable manner.