Digitization has been seen as the future of manufacturing for several years now. More than a decade ago, enough technological progress had been made to enable medium and large enterprises to digitize all their shop floors. However, even in 2021, many manufacturers have chosen to stay away from digitization for various reasons.

As per a 2019 global study by ToolsGroup, 32% of manufacturing companies were still at the exploring stage of adopting digitization. A full quarter of all companies were at the evaluating stage. This means that at least 58% of companies had not yet started with the adoption of shop-floor digitization. Only 27% were executing digitization, while only 7% were at the stage where its benefits could be felt. 

It emerges that the main reason why companies have chosen to stay away from digitization is that digital technologies can create disruption in the daily working of a company and lead to chaos and confusion. The cost of digitization is also a significant factor, with companies holding the belief that it is best suited for large companies only. This has created a large gap in digitization adoption between OEMs and small and medium-sized manufacturers.

 

Future Landscape of Digitization

Even with the evident gaps in digitization, the future landscape of digitization seems bright. There are several reasons firms are looking to adopt digitization, not the least of them being that the role of technology in manufacturing increases every year. It is likely that in the decades to come, a majority of manufacturing processes will have a digitized analog that is more efficient and provides better returns on investment. An investment in digitization is hence likely to lead to robust returns over the long term.

 

Why Adopt Digitization?

The primary reason for digitization not being adopted widely seems to be that the impact of digitization is only felt in the long term. There are several benefits of shop-floor digitization, some of which are listed below.

 

• Enhanced Operational Efficiency: Perhaps the most significant advantage of digital transformation is the improved efficiency of processes that it leads to. Digitization helps develop true end-to-end manufacturing, which is a significant part of the Industry 4.0 or smart factory concept. Enhanced operational efficiency is especially important in an era when competition across the manufacturing industry is increasing, and more prominent players seem to be capturing an ever-greater size of the market. It is only possible to retain your niche through the improved efficiency and cycle times that digitization brings. Once you have captured your niche, digitization also helps you determine better options for scaling and growing larger.

 

• Innovation: Digitization helps you in developing an intelligent factory system in which all repetitive tasks are automated. Such a system promotes innovation by its employees, managers, and workers. When workers do not have to perform repetitive tasks, they get a greater leeway to innovate and make existing processes much more robust. Digitization also helps companies innovate through data-driven decision making since their ideas can be justified using their digital systems’ data. When innovation is promoted on the shop floor, the organization saves costs and improves its efficiency in multiple departments.

 

• Qualified Cohort of Workers: The next generation of workers will not be required to do the same repetitive jobs that previous generations have. The future landscape of manufacturing suggests that as robotics becomes an ever greater part of the manufacturing landscape, workers will be required to be more than just simple physical instruments. They will need to be involved in every step of the manufacturing process and be empowered to manage operations efficiently. Shop-floor manufacturing solutions driven by digitization can be essential to provide this empowerment and create a more qualified workforce cohort.

 

• Customer Satisfaction: Over the past years, the customer has increasingly begun to be at the center of all manufacturing and management decisions across fields. As competition has increased and disruptors have come along in manufacturing at an increasing pace, the need to retain customers has become greater. Customers need to be kept satisfied by your services and the products that you provide. Driven by production insights through digitization and data-driven decision making, you can gain a greater understanding of the needs and requirements of your customers. Based on these needs, you can tweak your manufacturing process to prioritize customer demands.

 

• Reduction in Costs: While companies seem to be averse to digitization due to its high cost, this cost is returned many times over the medium to long term. Digitization saves you the cost of manpower and improves the efficiency of your manufacturing process, which is a cost that can seldom be accurately calculated. Realizing the benefits of digitization in terms of cost is generally the last step of the digitization pipeline. Companies that reach this stage typically continue to reap compounded benefits year on year.

 

Conclusion

It is evident that digitization is the future of manufacturing, and at some point, all levels of the shop floor will need to be digitized by companies of all sizes. Manufacturers who become early adopters of digitization are bound to reap greater benefits due to its compounding impact. Those who implement digital systems later might find themselves behind the curb.

Given the above reasons, now is the best time to get started with digitization. Equip your manufacturing facilities with digital infrastructure today, and remain ready for the years and decades to come. Shopworx provides an end to end solution for shop-floor monitoring to help manufacturers improve production immensely. Contact us for more information.