This July 2024, we published a report that tracks the progress that has been made in implementing the key features of Industrie 4.0, both in the process and discrete industries. The three steps in realizing the vision are 1) flexible, reconfigurable plant; 2) global manufacturing networks of flexible, configurable plants; 3) the integration of the […]

Product and service innovation, driven by digital technologies, is key to gaining extra value from new product introductions. One particularly interesting development is the emergence of modular plants. Forecasting a NPI can be very difficult. Modular plants help companies to scale economically.

A water purification company in Brazil can have the demand for their water treatment and sewage services increase as much as four times on a sunny day on a weekend.  To more accurately forecast demand, they count the number of vehicles driving into the community.  Demand analysis also relies on a forecast of weather conditions and historical tourism data. They are also prototyping IoT, Big Data, machine learning, and predictive analytics for process optimization.

At the SAP Insider SCM CRM 2016 event in Vienna this month, Ulrich Mast presented the current status and the planned future for Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PPDS), including SAP Advanced Planner and Optimizer PPDS (SAP APO PPDS) within the SAP Supply Chain Management suite (SCM) and S/4HANA . Smaller lot sizes, increasing variability […]

In my keynote, I stressed that Smart Manufacturing initiative around the world, are all inspired by research that indicates that manufacturing growth, competitiveness and resilience are directly correlated with high technology intensity and manufacturing complexity as well as quality.  These three key factors can be improved and maintained by investment in product, process and productivity […]