Manufacturing Operations During the COVID-19 Crisis

whitePaper | June 12, 2022

Automation has been a driving force behind greater productivity and efficiency in manufacturing companies since the 1980s. In the 2020s, a new generation of applications will enable even more production companies to benefit from the potential of automated processes. Advances in sensor technology and networking enable increasingly complex tasks to be performed reliably and safely by robots. Thanks to high-performance sensor technology, they can automatically react to many changing circumstances. Connected to the Internet of Things (IoT), the robots automatically provide information about progress and incidents. Via a remote connection, the IoT technology can be provided with new instructions, monitored, and remotely operated if necessary.

whitePaper | August 31, 2022

The business case for collaboration and cross-functional transformation Faced with significant and ongoing disruption in the industry, manufacturing companies have known for years that digital transformation is essential to maintain a competitive edge. COVID-19 has only accelerated the need for digital transformation. The pandemic has disrupted supply chains, created an increasingly distributed and remote workforce, caused significant changes in demand, and increased the challenges of providing field service. To address these changes, manufacturing companies have accelerated their investments in digitization. According to McKinsey, advances in this area are now ahead of schedule by three to four years.1

whitePaper | March 2, 2020

Discrete manufacturers in Great Britain and around the world have undergone huge transformation in this fourth Industrial Revolution – for a number of reasons. A combination of factors that include economic and market uncertainty, changing customer expectations around technology and a fast-moving green agenda are putting pressure on businesses to hone their supply chains and explore more sustainable and digital business models.

whitePaper | November 23, 2022

American manufacturing is a quintessential industry and represents 11.39 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (the overall output of the American economy), contributing significantly: every $1 spent in manufacturing adds $2.47 to the economy.1 The sector makes a disproportionate economic contribution, too, including 20 percent of the nation’s capital investment, 35 percent of productivity growth, 60 percent of exports, and 70 percent of business R&D spending.2 Since there are almost 300,000 factories in the United States, the economy benefits greatly from manufacturers. To ensure these companies remain competitive, adopting new technologies is imperative. To that end, companies must also determine what tools and software will be necessary to most effectively leverage these new technologies.

whitePaper | October 3, 2022

If yours is like most businesses today, you run a tight ship. When you see problems on your production line, you do not wait to solve them, and the result is a lean operation that does not let issues linger or snowball into larger problems. But it is impossible to fix what you cannot see or track. While Industry 4.0 is often a buzzword, Watlow® is already providing solutions that are helping manufacturers proactively forecast future issues and reduce costs. Given that the average cost of an hour of downtime in manufacturing was $532,000 in 2021, there is so much opportunity for businesses to save money with Industry 4.0.

whitePaper | September 15, 2023

Global megatrends are creating increasingly frequent disruptions to economies and organizations, which in turn are reshaping global value chains and pushing industries and manufacturing to transform themselves. These megatrends include geopolitical tensions and economic instabilities, climate change, technology integration and changing people dynamics.