Six steps to digital manufacturing success

How do you achieve digital manufacturing while balancing cost and maintaining production? RS Connected Thinking offer food for thought from the experts.

1. Understand

“Understand the real-world problem you are trying to address. There is no value in launching a digital transformation unless you are clear on the benefit you want to achieve,” says Richard Jeffers, Managing Director of RS Industria, RS Group.

2. Identify

“What I see in almost every business I visit, is that their machines are not connected into a site-wide digital strategy. What's their productivity? What's their overall equipment effectiveness? That's just not happening,” says Ian Clarke, CEO of Velocumen.

3. Engage

“Senior management these days are working on such a short ROI window…the board's response is likely to be; well what are we getting in return in the next two years?” reports Ian Clarke.

4. Select

According to Ian Clarke, companies should understand "not just the tech but your business, with experience in solving the issues you have” when making decisions about equipment and software.

5. Use the data

Richard Jeffers believes it’s vital to unlock a business’ data. “It’s not that we've suddenly discovered that data allows you to do predictive maintenance, it's that the cost of that data and the ability to process it has dramatically reduced, because technology can collect and interpret it.”

6. Stay on the journey

Digital manufacturing opens up a world of continuous improvement and Alex Smith from CIM Logic agrees that it is a journey not a destination at which you arrive and sit back.

To view the full article please visit the Connected Thinking website.