Manufacturers face global competition, workforce challenges, and the need to accelerate innovation while meeting sustainability demands. How can companies tackle these challenges and meet product demands of the future?

Transform their organizations into digital enterprises.  

In the Advanced Manufacturing Minneapolis keynote, “Digitalization: The Key to Accelerating the Future of Manufacturing,” Rahul Garg, vice president of industrial machinery at Siemens Digital Industries Software, told the audience that today's current approach to manufacturing won’t be able to meet future demands, so it’s time to take advantage of digitalization.

“Minneapolis has a strong future, with leadership in medical systems, in electronic systems, packaging machinery, and food packaging machinery. . . . There’s very impressive work that's going on here, and probably one of the most well-educated forces in the country. Close to $50 billion worth of manufacturing is conducted right here in Minneapolis,” he said.

“Now, while all that is going on, there are some big changes that are happening in the industry. Today, the workforce that we have, they are not keen on working manufacturing anymore. In fact, it's stated that there's going to be approximately some 2 to 3 million jobs that will not be fulfilled, which will have a big impact on our ability to continue to manufacture,” he said. In addition, “the whole concept of smarter machines, smarter components, bringing in more electronics and, more importantly, IoT-related capabilities, is going to have a big impact in the way equipment is designed and built, everything from a smartwatch to health meters to motors and generators that are running and driving machines. All of that is going to be evolving very, very rapidly. We need to be well equipped to do that.”

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Business models are also changing, he said. “Customers are going to be asking you to offer your equipment as a service, where you're no longer just selling the machine, but you're actually providing a service of that machine so that they can use it as an operational cost and not as a fixed cost,” he continued. “And there are many more such kinds of issues right all the way from scaling up your production, global competition, and managing regulatory requirements. . . .

“So, we think that today’s current processes actually will not be able to meet the demands that are going to be coming around as things change in the world. The current ways of how you’re doing things will need to change.” 

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Enter the concept of a digital enterprise.

“The digital enterprise is a way by which you combine the real world and the digital world. You bring these two worlds together, and by doing that, you have the ability to optimize your entire operations and entire company,” Garg told the audience.

The secret to making this all work is data, he said. By combining the real and the virtual worlds, “you have the power and the ability to harness that data in the most effective way and use that to drive the rest of your business operations. . . . The digital enterprise will give you the ability to bring all that data that you have inside your company and put it all together.”

There are three key elements of a digital enterprise, according to Garg:

• A comprehensive digital twin, which is “a digital representation of all the physical things that are going on inside your company,” including the product engineering process and the entire production operations, as well as how “your products, your equipment, your machines, whatever you're selling, are used in the field.”

• A digital thread “to bring all digital pins together in a more process-centric way.”

• The ability to leverage artificial intelligence.

Digital twin for the win

A comprehensive digital twin consists of a digital replica of the product being produced as well as the processes used to produce it, Garg explained.

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The first element of this approach is a 3D simulation of the entire machine, including a mechanical design, an electrical simulation, and a replica of how that machine would work, he said. “You are not just creating a simple part, but you are looking at the entire design of what you're trying to make in a much more effective way. And this becomes very, very important,” he said.

The second element of a comprehensive digital twin is that of the production process. “Digitalization and a comprehensive digital twin allow you to simulate every different element of your production operations,” he explained. “It makes it very easy for you to evaluate, test, recognize any issues, fix those issues in a digital world, and then actually go implement into the real world.”

Finally, a comprehensive digital twin would involve monitoring how the product is being used in the field by customers. Monitoring how that machine is performing not only allows manufacturers to support customers and solve their issues, but it also allows manufacturers to “harness that data and bring it back into the design and engineering process to address those issues,” he said.

Threading the digital needle

“The digital thread is basically a mechanism to bring all of your digital twins that you have created and do a more process-centric way making sure that you're connecting all of the different capabilities of your digital twins across your enterprise,” Garg said. 

Such a digital thread can start during the “sales and bidding process, where sales engineers coordinate with customers,” and then feed all requirements to your design engineering and manufacturing teams, he said. This enables the ability to gather “that collective intelligence inside your company to make it more effective in how you do your business,” he furthered. “The digital threads, we believe, have to be customized to an industry. Every industry has a different process. Every customer has a different process. . . . And once you start doing that, they also provide a roadmap on how you can expand the digital twin and the digital trade across your entire enterprise. . . . So, think of the digital thread as a subway map that allows you to go from step A to step D. And as you mature your journey, you can kind of fill up that whole roadmap inside your company.”

Enter AI

The third important element is industrial AI, Garg said. “Industrial AI, to me, is actually going to drive this whole concept of digitalization in a hyper mode. . . . Having the digital enterprise gives us that ability to collect all that data and take advantage of what AI can offer us.”

Garg advised looking for “robust” and “accurate” AI solutions as well as AI that “can be democratized, so that you have a lot many more people taking advantage of what AI has to offer inside your company.” And then you need to be “using AI where you can get real value.”

He offered three examples of how AI can be used: 

• Automating the mundane. “Now what we are doing is we are actually taking advantage of large language models, but more importantly, teaching it the language of engineering and manufacturing as well, teaching it the language of your corporation, of your company,” and “making sure that it's secure, so that any information that's communicated is not exposed.”

• Accelerating the important stuff. “AI can be used by an automation engineer with what we call as a copilot. This industrial copilot allows you to generate code for your PLCs,” he explained. Instead of starting from scratch, “the PLC engineer can actually go through that whole code that's been written up, make sure it's all okay, and make sure it adheres to what you want. . . . In some initial launches that we started around a year ago, we have found that the productivity of a PLC programmer can go up at least 30-40% because the initial work that needs to be done is now being done by the copilot.” And because there are very few PLC programmers, “using these kinds of copilots [makes it] very easy to democratize the whole value of AI as well across your company.” 

• Mechanize the hard. AI can create new solutions using data to overcome common challenges such as line stoppages.  

Getting started in manufacturing digitalization

“Digitalization is here—not in a year,” he concluded. “It’s going to be very critical to help you harness the collective intelligence of your company to make it a more effective organization.”

To get started, companies will need to establish “a single source of truth” for data and “connect” different pieces of information through digital twins, and then you have the ability to “optimize,” Garg said.