Our increasingly digitised world is heralding more intelligent, automated and data-driven product design and manufacturing, bringing transformational change and innovation to process and factory design.
In our earlier Industrial publication, Embracing the revolution, we shared our thoughts on how Industry 4.0 — big data, the Internet of Things and increasing automation — is revolutionising the way things are designed, made and sold.
Under pressure to make faster business decisions and respond more quickly to changing customer demands, manufacturers are getting better connected and planning ahead.
We’re investing in the future too and working with our industrial clients to help them understand and capitalise on the power of data to bring real value to their businesses.
In this, our second issue on Industry 4.0, we delve further into what 4.0 means in practice, drawing on real project experience where we’ve harnessed digital processes such as intelligent data capture and digital simulation to optimise our clients’ processes and facilities.
We look to our partnership with a German car manufacturer to show how, through digitally mapping and simulating an existing process, it’s possible to pinpoint areas of improvement and avoid production bottlenecks.
With leading industrial research suggesting that 60 per cent of production activities do not add value to the end product or customer, we also investigate how adopting lean thinking can optimise process and product design. But, what is lean all about? And what role are digital processes playing in the evolution of lean thinking?
We also explore how investing in on-site, renewable energy generation could deliver more resilient, sustainable and affordable power, as we’ve done with one of our clients at their research facility.
Finally, with speed to market everything for today’s industrial clients, we look at how standardised building design can be used to facilitate existing facility upgrades or build a new one more quickly.
As the industrial world continues to undergo great change, it’s important that businesses learn and understand all they can about the promise and potential of Industry 4.0 to stay competitive.
By unravelling the digital revolution, it’s possible to see how the convergence of data and industrial processes can be harnessed to optimise entire processes and facilities and add real business value into tomorrow.
Frank Thiesen
Chief Executive
Resources and Industry
Europe, Middle East, India and Africa
frank.thiesen@aecom.com
