Years ago, ARC Advisory Group identified a strong trend for manufacturers to engage with a main automation contractor (MAC) to supply, coordinate, and/or manage all automation-related aspects of a major capital project. Now, a digital integration services provider is increasingly important to achieve maximum business value over the operational lifecycle.

Digital transformation offers the potential to provide manufacturing companies with a path to future success. Dr. Eugene Tung, Executive Director, Manufacturing IT Merck & Co., recently described how and why investing in digital transformation at Merck is paying off.

In the era of connected things, product design and engineering are more challenging than ever before.  Physical design and performance characteristics must first be determined, and the operating environment understood. 

The effort and expense required to establish and operate an effective industrial cybersecurity management system can be difficult or impossible to justify in the conventional sense.  Responding to growing and evolving risks in cybersecurity across sectors is not an option, but an imperative.

India’s IT industry continues its moderate momentum as most of the IT services companies covered in the report exhibited above-average growth. 

The framework for digital transformation program steps an organization through a process that transforms its current state to a desired future state.

Overview

While moving from batch to continuous manufacturing may not be new in many other industries, it is in pharmaceutical and biotech manufacturing. According to Laura Wareham, Senior Scientist, Engineering, at Merck’s manufacturing division, while continuous manufacturing may be well-established in other high-volume industries with well-known processes, it is relatively new to the pharma industry.

Additive manufacturing (AM) technology is being adopted across many different industries, providing unique advantages and challenges for each.  ARC Advisory Group research indicates that, in 2018, the automotive and aerospace & defense industries were the two largest markets for additive manufacturing.

Are conflicts between operations and maintenance still the norm in your organization?  A quick poll of the audience attending the Maintenance & Operations:  Better Together session at the 2019 ARC Industry Forum in Orlando, Florida, indicated that the answer is YES.

Overview

For nearly two decades, we’ve seen considerable emphasis placed on the need to protect the integrity of the various elements of the critical infrastructure. In response to this imperative, industrial cybersecurity has become a well-defined discipline, complementing the more mature discipline of information security.