State of Automation: Manufacturing in Industry 4.0

whitePaper | May 18, 2023

Frost & Sullivan created this visual whitepaper to educate the industrial landscape on Industry 4.0. Frost & Sullivan leveraged its 60+ years of market intelligence experience and distinguished reputation in industrial technologies to illustrate and discuss why industrial organizations should seriously consider embarking on a digital transformation journey by providing insightful concepts, facts, and concrete quantitative and qualitative evidence. We will first set the context by providing a brief historical background, discussing the evolution and disruptions of the industrial and manufacturing realms, and clarifying terminology by elaborating on the digitization, digitalization, digital thread, digital transformation, and digital maturity concepts (which are often incorrectly used interchangeably).

whitePaper | May 13, 2023

Across every major industry segment, the application of advanced digital technologies and Industry 4.0 capabilities offers manufacturers powerful new capabilities to enable flexible production, improved product quality and real-time insight into the performance of their operations. However, these factories and production lines aren’t built by themselves. Designing, engineering and building these advanced systems demand intense investment in time, resources and know-how to solve some of the world’s most complex technology challenges.

whitePaper | September 30, 2022

Until 2020, progress towards digital transformation for most manufacturers was slow. But the urgency for manufacturers to make successful digital transformations escalated during the first 8-12 months of the global pandemic. As COVID-19 reshaped consumer buying behaviors, the pace jumped from a crawl to a sprint: According to one study, 85% of organizations accelerated their digital transformation initiatives in 2020.[1] Some industry observers believe we witnessed 6.5 years of digital progress in the last eight months of 2020 alone.[2] The pandemic was largely responsible for worldwide supply chain disruptions that slowed down goods production and delivery. As a result, manufacturers justifiably focused on managing and fixing the supply chain problems first. But as the pandemic continued, it became clear that the supply chain issues were a symptom of something deeper than the short-term disruptions.

whitePaper | August 1, 2020

Imagine the power of a process model that defines the pace of your production. Imagine process mining insights, which allow you to feel the pulse of actual process performance. Imagine a digital twin as a virtual representation of your manufacturing processes. Imagine a single software which - at the same time - enables a more collaborative approach, with all members of the workforce working towards performance improvement, reducing waste & defects. Now stop imagining... that reality is here.

whitePaper | July 30, 2020

After the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly ground the world to a halt in the first few months of 2020, it created both new challenges for the manufacturing industry and exacerbated those that had existed for some time. According to an article by McKinsey & Company analysts,1 the future we expected by 2020 hasn’t quite come to pass. Rather than a significant shift towards more automation and a smaller workforce, the opposite is true, due in part to the pandemic.

whitePaper | February 24, 2023

Business demands have forced manufacturers to be more agile. Smart manufacturers are adopting technology, specifically digital twins, to move faster. Using a digital twin in a manufacturing environment can fast-track discovering bottlenecks, drive efficiencies, lower costs, reduce environmental footprint, and help manage risk. However, there is mystery around digital twins, from defining what they are and their strengths to the critical importance of an ecosystem approach to address the diversity of digital twin scenarios. The goal of this paper is to demystify digital twins, so more manufacturers can apply the technology and bring agility to their operations.