A Glimpse into the Future of Manufacturing

The Indian manufacturing sector is increasingly assuming significant importance in the global manufacturing landscape. Its rapid transformation is ushering in innovation for improving agility, efficiency and productivity. However, the need is to bring innovators and leaders together with the best solutions to jointly transform operations and sustain our environment, delivering on the promise of a brighter future.

In the present era of rapid technological advancements, manufacturing organizations are witnessing a global Industry Renaissance. With the emergence of new businesses and categories of solutions, processes, and services, companies now prioritize sustainable innovation and experiences over productivity gains. To keep up with these advancements, businesses must be faster, more integrated and more agile than ever. The companies which are leading in the manufacturing sector today are the ones that create value through networks to make sustainable and innovative products.

Reimagining the manufacturing of tomorrow

Manufacturing companies should think of manufacturing as a process of value creation and no longer as just a means of producing goods and services. We are living in an experience economy where the utility of the product and the service take precedence over the mere product itself. Businesses now strive to implement value networks in which the real and virtual merge to create new ways of conducting businesses. What is changing is the platform manufacturers use to deliver the value:

Value networks that transform supply chains to maximize the social impact by breaking down the barriers between industrial trading partners, producers, and makers with new business models for delivering sustainable innovation to consumers.

Sustainable innovation and excellence that eliminates risk, and increases the ability to predict thereby improving operational performance. There is an amalgamation of the power of virtual worlds and real operations where people and machines utilize a business platform to come together and change business outcomes.

Workforce of the future reveals today’s workforce talents which can improve the workforce of tomorrow through the power of experiences and know-how gained by constant learning and collaboration.

With the help of digitalization – big data analytics, real-time data acquisition and digital continuity – sustainable innovation and excellence are becoming a reality.

Value networks

With digitalization becoming mainstream, there is a surge in the innovation which can disrupt the industry. Now, with the real and virtual world combined, manufacturers can more easily replicate and modify product design and manufacturing processes – anything from an automobile to an electronic device to apparel to a building infrastructure, making it quick and easy to identify, hire and collaborate with the best partner available for each task. It is easily possible to assemble teams from across multiple industries.

The emergence of online marketplaces makes it possible to evolve the supply chain into a value network: a single, virtual, social enterprise, pioneering a new way to do business, innovate, and create value in the manufacturing industry. Online platforms and marketplaces have already transformed retail, transportation and hospitality services. Now, manufacturing markets are transforming as well by matching makers with producers.

Dassault Systèmes has extended its platform to a 3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace connecting Indian companies (OEMs, SMEs or startups) who are wishful for the adoption of this technology with industrial services providers, leading to online collaboration and faster innovation. Redesigning parts, assembling them and a systematic exploration of the printing process parameters (path speed, path layout, for instance) has never been this easy, that too with an assurance of durability and high quality of parts.

Sustainable innovation and excellence

With the help of digitalization, the availability of big data analytics, real-time data acquisition and digital continuity from ideation to design to production and even to ownership — sustainable innovation and excellence are becoming a reality. We are now able to more quickly than ever embrace technology advances (such as the Digital Twin, Additive Manufacturing, Artificial Intelligence, Industrial Internet of Things). With a mindset of continuous improvement and competitive agility, businesses can drive value, meet market demands and deliver unique, one-to-one experiences for everyone. Virtual modeling is also making continuous improvement possible for product design, manufacturing processes, and customer satisfaction. Unified product and process models integrate feedback from the shop floor (including digital data generated by low-cost wireless sensors and cameras), the supply network, the distribution network and consumers to update and validate operations processes and marketing plans.

Change is crucial

Additive manufacturing (AM) popularly known as 3D printing, is a manufacturing technology that has been evolving since the early 1990s, but can finally be said to be proving its worth in many fields. Recently, the advancements in the technology have brought 3D printing to the desktop and the home through the Maker movement. Significantly, the scope of AM is now expanding beyond rapid prototyping into industrial applications of both tool-product and direct-part production. Additive manufacturing is an exciting example and transformational component of this change. It is now possible to design a part or subsystem as a single, solid object, rather than relying on multiple components that are assembled. Integrating different materials enables new capabilities for strength, weight, flexibility and more. AM techniques can enable more efficient, low volume production of complex parts and can also save on materials, improving materials usage/waste ratios in production. Companies that can change how they do business or get closer to customers the fastest will have the advantage in transforming how they manufacture, use their value network and maintain operating margins.

Switching from traditional manufacturing to 3D printed parts requires a redesign of the parts or even the assemblies. It requires a systematic exploration of the printing process parameters (path speed, path layout, for instance) to ensure durable high-quality parts. Therefore, companies need to transform themselves to leverage 3D printing. In India, the majority of small and medium sized organizations have limited access to printers. On the contrary, there has been a surge in OEMs and startups exploring 3D printing and trying to leverage this as a business advantage. This has led to the introduction of multiple variants of 3D printing processes with new and improved technologies. Some large OEMs even have in-house 3D printers, but face the real dilemma when they require access to external ones to test or compare newer processes.

The Indian manufacturing sector has assumed significant importance in the global manufacturing landscape. The time has come when India needs to embrace agility, flexibility, and scalability in its manufacturing units. Moreover, with the emergence of a new business-friendly scenario in the country, today, on one hand, many new factories are coming up and on the other hand, a large number of manufacturing companies are considering installation of production facilities or assembly lines for new product development. However, whether it is a brownfield or greenfield investment, planning from the scratch will be a time-consuming affair leading to over expenditure. Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE TWIN will drastically cut down the time frame and lead to a substantial cost saving – as it allows the entire planning, simulation, testing and validation in the virtual form. As 3DEXPERIENCE TWIN allows manufacturers to design and see the entire model of the factory, with this one, they can ensure the right allocation of the spaces for their activities such as machinery, raw material, and goods storage, in and outbound docking systems and so on. One can also manipulate the positioning of the activity spaces and watch its impact on the overall factory operation to achieve a lean and agile manufacturing process.

Workforce of the future

Continuous improvement for products, processes and customer satisfaction are enabled by highly skilled workforces with knowledge and know-how. The leading manufacturers of the future will be those who successfully educate and empower their employees to deliver new categories of products, sustainable solutions, and imagine new ways of working knowledge and know-how.
By a popular estimate, 65 percent of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that don’t yet exist. In such a rapidly evolving employment landscape, the ability to anticipate and prepare for future skills requirements, job content and the aggregate effect on employment is increasingly critical for businesses, governments, and individuals in order to fully seize the opportunities presented by these trends and to mitigate undesirable outcomes. In the 21st century, we are no longer limited by the availability of information, experiences or best practices. Thanks to new technologies, collaboration is now possible on a multi-discipline and multi-scale approach. The capacity to make and learn is vast, with options now available to link current education models with business startups, Fablabs and innovation hubs.

The platform approach to manufacturing

Manufacturing has always meant constantly inventing and reinventing. To continue to be successful, more than ever, we need to place power, meaning knowledge and know-how, into the hands of everyone. We need people who can work together to imagine, test, create and implement ideas in the real and the virtual worlds. They will learn by doing, using existing know-how to augment knowledge building.

The leading companies won’t be those who try to repeat the past or tweak the present but those who imagine and create a world that didn’t exist before.

Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform connects the technologies and solutions to pursue discoveries, nurture them and bring the results to business and people throughout the world. Sophisticated modeling and simulation, data acquisition, analysis and reporting, and breakthroughs in imaging and manufacturing come together for organizations pursuing what was once thought ‘impossible’. For manufacturing, the result is an operations management and development environment with a single, federated view of models, processes, operations, and planning. Essentially the 3DEXPERIENCE platform provides a global operations management view that supports knowledgeable decision making to keep things running smoothly and exploring new innovation horizons. This helps optimize

production for greater efficiency and output while reducing costs and time-to-market. A major challenge of manufacturing innovation is that by definition, it creates change.

For a production environment often, change can be seen as bad. There isn’t time to stop, adjust, test and go back online which could waste time, production and revenue. But a virtualized 3DEXPERIENCE twin enables companies to innovate while mitigating risks. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform is transforming, enabling innovation for improving agility, efficiency and productivity. Dassault Systèmes’ commitment is to bring innovators and leaders together with the best solutions (or experiences). Together, we can transform operations and sustain our environment, delivering on the promise of a brighter future. Such is the promise of manufacturing in the age of experience.

By a popular estimate, 65 percent of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that don’t yet exist.