blue, worker, hardhat, machine

Industry 4.0’s real business impact on product development and design is often understated in the hype it has created. More and more products are being made with native intelligence that allows for both connectivity and evaluation after they are deployed and in use. The performance of the product after deployment is of interest to both the user and the manufacturer of the product.

IoT and deep asset performance monitoring are going to do more than make predictive maintenance possible. This same data set will provide unprecedented insights into the actual usage of these assets. What better predictive maintenance strategy could there be than incremental design improvements that eliminate root causes of potential failure? OEMs of equipment and manufacturers of intelligent products can and will drive very real improvements in their products. With these improvements, machines can provide better performance because they are simply better machines.

Performance Knowledge is Power

The increase in knowledge associated with asset performance will shorten the design cycle around products. As a result, engineering design changes will occur at a much more rapid rate. The launch and management of product revisions may even vary between incremental manufacturing production orders for the same SKU. Over time, manufacturing business systems supporting production planning and quality management will have to support this increase in the tracking of manufacturing versions and revisions of as-delivered products.

For more information about the role Industry 4.0 will play in manufacturing and ERP, take a look at this recent white paper.

LEAVE A REPLY