Manufacturing thought leaders congregated at the annual ARC Advisory Group World Industry Forum in February to exchange ideas concerning the technology strategies that will impact business this year. Despite the feeling that the worst of the recession is behind us, there continues to be a general mind-set that the industry must “proceed with caution,” which means protecting and optimizing assets already in place, rather than adding cutting-edge applications into the mix.
ARC President Andy Chatha kicked off the conference program with a high-level view of the business pressures that companies face, including a changing workforce, increasing regulations, the need to go green, and the soon-to-be smart grid. He emphasized easy-to-use collaboration tools, in the form of social networks and videoconferencing technologies, that will soon find their way into the manufacturing enterprise.
The message: New challenges will require rethinking processes. To that end, ARC painted a picture of a futuristic collaborative enterprise that synchronizes the supply chain, product development, plant, and operations.
Most manufacturers are not operating with an end-to-end collaborative enterprise for a number of reasons, including integration issues, limited budgets, and concerns about cyber-security, according to ARC. Moreover, the operations landscape has changed dramatically over the past few years. For example, asset lifecycle management projects are becoming bigger and more complex as the definition of an asset spans physical equipment, human capital, and reference data, including product designs, project procedures, and activity records for tracking and tracing.