Representative End User Clients
Representative Automation Clients
Representative Software Clients
Overview
At the 24th Annual ARC Industry Forum in Orlando, Florida, an executive panel discussion on the digital transformation of industry followed the keynote addresses.
In part 1 of this multi-part ARC Insight, the executive panelists addressed questions related to: organizational silos, IT/OT convergence, supplier support for digital transformation, digital innovation approaches, and overcoming commercial barriers to innovation. Here, in part 2, the panelists share their perspectives on:
- What the plants and factories of the future could look like
- Potential cloud adoption for operational data and solutions
- Strategies for getting workers to accept and use new technologies
- Avoiding the trap of like-for-like technology replacement
- Digital twins in process and discrete manufacturing
Participating in the panel from the technology users’ side were Billy Bardin, Global Operations Technology Director at Dow; Don Bartusiak, Chief Engineer of Process Control at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering; and Dr. Henning Löser, head of the Audi Production Lab.
From the technology supplier side, were Christine Boles, VP of the IoT Group at Intel; and John Kovac, Director of Microsoft’s Manufacturing business unit. ARC’s Andy Chatha moderated the panel discussion.
What Will the Plants and Factories of the Future Look Like?
David Brousell from the Manufacturing Leadership Council posed a pointed question for the panelists: “Let’s fast forward to 2030, what's the future state of our factories and plants? What will they look like ten years from now?”
Audi’s Henning Löser was the first panelist to respond. “That's a great question. And for me, I think there is no general answer to that be-cause you need to look at your individual company. What is the real value of what you're doing? For us at Audi, we strongly believe that building cars will continue to require craftsmanship. Yes, it's high-volume production but, at the very end, actually assembling the car will require craftsmanship. However, everything that is not actually helping to add value for this craftsmanship will be automatized...if you want to have a premium product where craftsmanship is visible, you have to have craftsmanship. You cannot automize that.”
Christine Boles from Intel addressed Dave Brousell’s question from the company’s perspective as a semiconductor manufacturer. “Fifteen years ago, I was in the group that runs our semiconductor manufacturing plants, our fabs. At that time, we were just starting to introduce the concept of a remote operations center. We were just starting to introduce the idea of automated material handling. In our fabs, we had people wheeling the wafers from machine to machine and operators interacting with the machines to start the process steps.
Fast forward to where we are now. We can run a factory on an exception basis from remote operations centers. We have automated material handling. But our journey isn't done. We continue to look for how we can maintain our equipment through better insights. I think over the next five to ten years we’ll start to see other industries utilizing these kinds of capabilities.”
Don Bartusiak from ExxonMobil Research provided a process industry perspective. “In 2030, we will still be replacing 1980s-vintage control systems. But the role of the console operator will change; we are going to see more autonomous types of operations. The types of solutions we deliver to the console operator in broad terms will have more autonomous characteristics. But beyond the console operator, I think our maintenance staffs are going to be vastly more digitally enabled than they are today. We're investing heavily in that.”
He also pointed out the company will change the way it does process engineering. Instead of spreading the company’s engineering talent around at its various manufacturing facilities, much engineering will be performed at an above-site level so its process talent and equipment experts will be able to see the whole fleet, rather than being physically located at one facility and just servicing that one site.
Billy Bardin from Dow agreed with Mr. Bartusiak about the continuing need to upgrade legacy systems. “Across the process industry, we have a whole fleet of plants that came on stream in 2010, 2011, and 2012, 2015. In ten years, those plants are still going to be running and they’ll look pretty much the same. In fact, we're still running plants that are 60 or 70 years old and older inside Dow. Those assets aren't going to change. There's not a disposition to get to shutdown economics with this. But I think what you're going to see is a fundamental shift from today’s plant- or site-wide optimization approach where we've been very successful in deploying things like advanced control, optimization, and real-time optimization; to an enterprise-wide or value chain-wide optimization approach where you get real-time feedback that dictates not only your production plan, but also your shipments, your raw materials scheduling, and how these impact your customers’ inventories.
“It's that full-value-chain optimization, applying what we have from advanced control and optimization and real-time optimization plus forthcoming AI technologies into the value chain, that I think will really be the fundamental difference. Sure, you're going to see more connected workers, but that value chain-wide optimization is probably the key difference between what we have, not what we’ll have in our future plants.”
Cloud Adoption for Operational Data and Solutions?
Jacqueline Arnold from Hexagon posed a question about cloud deployments for the panel: “What is your current state and your future strategy for the cloud adoption of your operational data and solutions?”
Mr. Bardin from Dow took the first stab at this. “I think that for us, at least, it's going to be very much technology [and application]-dependent. As I look at our previous 20 years, of course, we've used very much on-prem-type solution, at least for Dow-controlled solutions.” He believes that enterprise-level data, corporate finance, HR, etc., can flow more easily to a cloud solution, but “there are some process technologies and intellectual property that will never get outside the Dow fence. They will never be on-cloud. It will either be on-prem on a process control server or somewhere that has a highly regulated physical and cybersecurity fence line. So it just depends. We have technologies that are going to be on-cloud and we have some that will never be on-cloud. I believe it will be a mixed platform.”
Audi’s Dr. Löser commented that, “While we are a completely different company, that answer would hold for us as well. Up to now, every factory has had its own set of operational systems. They may have the same name, but every system is tweaked at every one of the 120 VW Group plants.” He explained that this means they can’t replicate or scale up the same solution from one factory to another. But the company is doing something about this.
Referring to a recent press release, Dr. Löser explained that the Volkswagen Group has teamed up with both Siemens and AWS to help connect the group’s 120+ global plants to the Amazon cloud. This will create a digital production platform on which to build new operational systems that will enable the Volkswagen Group to control and run its factories. However, to accommodate time-critical processes where latency would be an issue and/or to protect critical intellectual property, many of the applications will be run closer to the factories or even on-prem.
ARC Advisory Group clients can view the complete report at ARC Client Portal
If you would like to buy this report or obtain information about how to become a client, please Contact Us
Keywords: Industrial Digital Transformation, Automization, Open Process Automation, Craftsmanship, Value Chain Optimization, Digital Twin, Domain Knowledge, Dow, ExxonMobil, Audi, Microsoft, Intel, ARC Advisory Group.