Digitalization: Driving the Industrial Manufacturing Sector to New Heights
We are ending a decade. Hopefully, we will leave a heartbreaking pandemic behind us as we say hello to a new world in 2021. Agriculture, manufacturing and service sectors around the globe are enroute apocalyptic disruptions in trade practices and business processes. We are in between two path-breaking decades, and what threads them both is an invisible but stronger fiber of digitalization. Only digitalization will be carried forward into 2021. And, there is a reason why digitalization as a business process has survived in this time. It is due to its fertile and incubating ecosystem that nourishes its constant growth and consequent survival. Sectors and industries driven once only by physical operations and strenuous labor participation like industrial manufacturing are now automating and digitalizing to beat competition, to scale up and importantly to survive.
Organizational functions that the industries seek to digitalize and integrate into the folds of the new processes include procurement, accounting, customer services, supply chain, business intelligence, human resources and distribution. These require organizational changes and structural changes.
Discussing the industrial manufacturing sector, it has been in constant flux; it has been experimenting with new unsettling technologies to propel advanced developments for a time and cost efficient optimum production level. Initially, the manufacturing sector, especially in India, showed great reluctance to adopt digitalization but with the ready adoption of digitalization internationally India caught the winds of changing times to position themselves as industry leaders who are bankable, aggressively competitive, and feasible.
Technology Pushing Digitalization
Talking about industrial automation, technological advancements have occurred externally like IoT, communications, open software and electronics are the technologies that have been adopted first. These external technologies like PCs, server virtualization, Windows software, Ethernet, Wi-Fis, wireless networks and cloud computing were rather easy to learn and learning from the lack of it made acceptance easier for the industry.
For the manufacturing sector that thrives on precision and mission-critical applications and heavily bound by forward and backward synchronized processes, the availability, stable reliability and performance of these digitalization technologies have been a prime and immediate reason for its adoption for automation and control of industrial manufacturing. The manufacturing sector has seen a rise in demand for customized technological innovations to augment their processes as they see reliability in its applications across different product segments improving time efficiency in industrial controls and automation.
This is only a start, industry leaders although stalwarts in their respective fields are opening up to digitalization with an open heart. This change of heart has occurred as Digitalization to a great extent has been a savior in amidst the current pandemic. With the help of digitalization manufacturing companies have been able to maintain and hold their position on supply chain and production targets through time bound deliveries across regions globally, especially in Asia. Digitalization in automation has started its way towards being rigorously adopted only now as the benefits glaring in front of business heads and forerunners in the space. Considering the current turmoil caused by Covid, it has sharpened the industry views for the benefit of digitalization. At Covestro, we see more clearly what is technically feasible and useful, also in terms of flexible working. Based on our vigorous IT, our mobile office concept has proven a valid alternative and is expected to gain a bigger share of our work routine. Equally, flexibility in our daily work and agile structures will get a boost.
The global manufacturing sector is focusing on digitalization to strengthen customer centricity, make marketing strategies more efficient, and channelize attractive market opportunities in easy and ready-to-use routes of established processes. Digitalization of the production will make planning, operation and maintenance smooth.
Quantum computing is also picking frills in the run up to digital hauls for industry when push comes to shove. Companies feel that exponential data processing in research and development will lead to process efficiency saving time and environmentally friendly process that will saving resources. With the help of quantum computing, details of highly complex chemical reaction processes can be digitally simulated and evaluated in a very short time. With quantum computing, Covestro intends to build on the success of previous investments and further deepen its global competencies in computational chemistry.
Traditional automation suppliers gave a tough fight to the use of Ethernet networks and Microsoft support but eventually acknowledged and accepted it. External technologies have brought about a certain speed to production in the manufacturing industry improving competitiveness. It integrates industrial automation, business information into the computer architecture, to sustain competition. A decade back the world did not think technology would be accepted by the rigidly mechanical industrial manufacturing sector to achieve efficiency in production. But, production efficacy is the key to survival.
Today the future of the manufacturing sector looks more promising; it doesn't look like an odd torn page off the book of business synchronicities. Change is never easy to accept, implement or execute but for the industrial manufacturing industry but it is imperative for the sector to gather new sails to reach a new shore.
