In manufacturing today, this is reflected in the complex proprietary systems that create data silos and slow productivity. Manufacturers must combine talent, technology, and future readiness to drive transformation, resilience and competitiveness in the new normal.

How can manufacturers become more innovative and deliver a sustainable future and competitive growth? By looking at unifying data and intelligent manufacturing and resources. Here are five ways you can get started.

1. Transform the workforce and empower innovation

Manufacturers often work across different sites. Frontline workers often need secure access while out in the field. Or perhaps, you have a hybrid workforce. To work in their best way, everyone needs the same secure access to their tools and apps, no matter where they are.

Combine productivity apps, intelligent cloud services and security to transform the way you work wherever you are. While the Ventilator Challenge UK was a unique scenario where 33 manufacturers came together to address the shortage of ventilators, the way they chose to work highlighted the power of technology.

By using Microsoft Teams, the Challenge found communication between everyone easy. They could collaborate on documents, have meetings, and share information as a single source of truth. With built-in security, data is protected in transit and at rest, meaning confidential proprietary information can be shared with confidence.

“It’s been absolutely invaluable as a collaboration tool. It saved so much time and confusion,” says Laura Shrieves, Head of Systems Engineering – Training Solutions at Thales, one of the participating engineering companies.

Another challenge manufacturers face is the ability to train and assist frontline workers from anywhere. This is where Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and the HoloLens 2 can come in handy. With the help of this technology, manufacturers can now empower people to collaborate, solve problems in real time, access critical information while working and be able to walk through the site virtually. With Dynamics 365, the Ventilator Challenge were able to quickly train employees across different sites and deliver expert guidance when needed.

“We quickly realised that the HoloLens 2 could be used with the remote assist capability in order to get expertise and knowledge out of Smiths and Penlon, who have been building ventilators for many years. This was one of the big advantages,” says Shrieves.

2.      Engage customers in new ways

By unifying your data across different silos (e.g. service, sales and marketing), you can drive value with insights and deliver personalised customer experiences, making you more agile and competitive in the market.

Automotive enterprise CNH Industrial, wanted to help customers optimise the use of their vehicles. They built a digital platform on Azure to collect insights that can give their customers information on how to save fuel or optimise their journeys. They can also then use this data to deliver better experiences and build better products, quickly.

“The platform may provide feedback to truck drivers on how to brake or accelerate differently. Such changes in driving style can save money on gas,” says Matteo Barion, Head of Digital Platform, DevOps & Quality Assurance at CNH Industrial.

3. Make the supply chain more visible and intelligent

When you make your supply chain intelligent with AI and IoT connected to devices and factories, you can improve resiliency, efficiency, traceability and profitability. When you build agile manufacturing and distribution processes you can deliver products on time, optimise resource planning, adapt to changing business models, and ensure business continuity while staying profitable.

Coats is one of the world’s leading industrial thread manufacturers and thus has global operations and a complex supply chain. By moving to Azure, they gained the flexibility and agility to optimise existing processes and accommodate for unexpected changes in operation.

By linking everything to an intelligent supply chain, Coats can minimise its environmental footprint while keeping up with demand. For example, they were able to fine-tune thread winding machines to ensure it only uses what it needs, and by moving to the cloud from on-premise data centres, they have been able to reduce their carbon footprint and now only use processing power when they need to.

“With Azure, we have the horsepower we need to hold to our timelines and get products through the manufacturing floor in an efficient manner,” says Helge Brummer, Vice President of Technology and Operations at Coats. “In some situations, the results have been dramatic. For example, sampling orders—which are an important part of customer decision-making—used to take 10 to 14 days to process. With the agility of the cloud, we’ve cut that to two days.”

4.      Optimise plant and asset lifecycle

That brings us to our next way that manufactures can innovate by infusing operations with tech and industrial IoT you can drive reliability and quality whilst delivering safe and secure operations.

By leveraging machine learning and AI across factories, Ricoh can access greater insight through data to deliver greater value for customers. Ricoh can adjust machines in real time ensuring they are running at optimum and producing high quality products. They have also improved operational and cost efficiency by up to 10 times with predictive maintenance.

5. Drive new innovation and new services

Finally, by unifying data and harnessing the power of analytics and AI, you can uncover new business value from digital services and sustainable products that can transform the customer experience.

To increase supply chain transparency and implement innovative logistics solutions across plans, BMW Group started several logistic pilot programmes in their production lines. They developed automation kits, smart watch capabilities, and Smart Transport Robots.

This meant they were able to load and unload goods containers quicker, integrate scanners, displays and smartwatches to support employee logistics and utilise virtual reality to create spaces for planning and logistics of new plant sites.

“Logistics is the heart of our production system. Our broad spectrum of ground-breaking projects helps us run increasingly complex logistics processes efficiently and transparently​,” says Jürgen Maidl​, Head of Logistics.

Be ready for the new normal

Underpinning manufacturers ability for sustainable growth now and in the future is Manufacturing technology and industry expertise. The most important thing to remember about driving this change is to keep your people at the heart of any decisions. Unifying data and optimising processes across supply chains makes it easier for your employees to uncover insights, deliver personalised customer experiences and innovate with new products and services.

We work closely with manufacturing companies and industry organisations to ensure we are delivering genuine business outcomes through partnerships that bring together expertise in people, processes, and technology. We work closely with a number of the innovation centres, in particular the Advanced Manufacturing and Research Centre (AMRC), to help scale innovation across the manufacturing landscape. We’ve also worked with BMW Group to create the Open Manufacturing Platform (OMP). Designed to break down barriers through the creation of an open technology framework and cross-industry community, we’re supporting the development of smart factory solutions. The goal is to significantly accelerate future industrial IoT developments, shorten time to value and drive production efficiencies while addressing common industrial challenges.

This all connects to help manufacturers become more resilient, agile and ultimately more innovative. In the last year, we’ve learned to expect the unexpected and sustainable growth helps us manage this with confidence.

Find out more

Discover more about the resilient supply chain

Harness the power of data and analytics

About the author

Richard is responsible for leading Microsoft’s approach into the UK Manufacturing industry.

Richard joined Microsoft 14 years ago, where he has held various leadership roles across the business, the most recent of which is to establish and drive Microsoft’s strategy into the UK Industrial sector. He works closely with businesses and partners across automotive, aerospace, and manufacturing focussing on how digital transformation can enable them to achieve more.

He also works closely with associated industry bodies and consortia, supporting industry collaboration, growth and skills development.

Richard holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Accounting.

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The post 5 ways to empower manufacturers for innovation appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

By taking a people-first approach to returning to the workplace, organisations will drive better engagement from their employees in demonstrating that they are putting employee safety and wellbeing above all else.

Using tech to empower employee safety

Our workspaces need to be optimised for social distance, as well as resilience. Using technology to optimise the workforce is the best way to make it easy for them to do their best work and to create workplaces where employees feel safe and protected.

Our partners have been instrumental in helping organisations ensure an efficient return to work, while prioritising employee safety. Transparity is a great example of this as they’ve been at the forefront of helping customers respond to COVID-19, from helping transition to remote working at the start, to enabling a safe return to work as we begin to adjust to the new normal. At a recent hackathon, they created a no/low code app via Power Apps that helps improve employee health and wellbeing. Because the app is quick to build, you can implement it quickly across your factories and offices and it can also be customised to suit specific business needs and requirements.

Here are three ways you can use Transparity’s PowerApp to keep your employees safe and healthy when planning the return to work:

1.      Track symptoms with thermal imagery

Part of the ‘new normal’ is looking at your workplaces and how they can be adapted to social distancing, such as implementing clear guidance on social distancing in workplaces. Provide PPE, such as gloves, face shields, masks as well as hand sanitiser and handwashing stations. This will help show employees that their health is the priority when they return.

Take a look at some easy technological solutions too. For COVID-19, body temperature is a key indicator of infection. By placing thermal cameras at entrances, you can use Transparity’s app to track employee’s temperatures easily. If an employee has a higher than average temperature, they are sent additional information via the app. The employee’s line manager is also notified; and where needed, additional measures can be put in place.

2.      Identify risks through proactive monitoring

Part of empowering employees is to ensure their voices are heard. This can be as simple as asking employees to complete a self-assessment on a weekly basis. This proactive monitoring is one that enables an organisation to identify employees who may present with symptoms in the future.

3.      Maintain clear communication

The best way to keep employees engaged is to keep lines of communication open, listening, and implementing feedback, especially through times of change.

Regular virtual meetings, Q&As and even quick email messages are great ways to give updates, information, and connect with the workforce. For quick information, an app with Microsoft Power Virtual Agent built in lets users ask commonly asked questions and receive this information in real-time. It can link out to relevant company information and escalate to a team if an answer can’t be found.

Creating an employee-centric culture

By implementing technology that supports a safe return to work, manufacturers will show their employees that they’re leading people-first rather than profit-first. This will create a workforce of supportive, engaged employees who are confident to return to work in their best way.

Find out more

A Year of Change: Digital Transformation Trends in 2020 e-book

Building your first business app

The total economic impact of Power Apps

A roadmap to recovery: How manufacturers can return to work safely

About the author

Richard is responsible for leading Microsoft’s approach into the UK Manufacturing industry.

Richard joined Microsoft 14 years ago, where he has held various leadership roles across the business, the most recent of which is to establish and drive Microsoft’s strategy into the UK Industrial sector. He works closely with businesses and partners across automotive, aerospace, and manufacturing focussing on how digital transformation can enable them to achieve more.

He also works closely with associated industry bodies and consortia, supporting industry collaboration, growth and skills development.

Richard holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Accounting.

The post Return to work: Three ways technology can enable employee safety appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Within the manufacturing industry, in particular, this challenging period has revealed some uplifting stories of collaboration. Many businesses are working hard to help the wider community, sometimes in partnership with their day-to-day competitors.

For example, Ford, GE, and 3M pledged to pool their resources and expertise to help make ventilators, respirators, and other medical equipment. Toyota did the same, while supporting patient transportation and even drug development and infection-control research.

Microsoft has also played its part, working with a consortium of major industrial, technology, and engineering companies to help produce medical ventilators for the NHS, as part of the VentilatorChallengeUK.

[msce_cta layout=”image_center” align=”center” linktype=”blue” imageurl=”http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/industry/blog/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2020/06/STI-employees-with-assembled-ventilators.jpg” linkurl=”http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-gb/about/ventilator-challenge/” linkscreenreadertext=”Find out more about the Ventilator Challenge” linktext=”Find out more about the Ventilator Challenge” imageid=”37458″ ][/msce_cta]

Return to work

Reflecting on recent events and the prospect ahead, whilst appreciating that this is not an easy time for many, we can also see exciting new opportunities for the manufacturing industry. With a change of perspective and smart decision-making, manufacturers can potentially recover faster, build resilience, and drive future innovation. 

In a spirit of partnership, we feel that an approach to recovery could be broken into three chronological phases:

Traditionally, the manufacturing sector has not been an early or keen tech adopter. But if we can learn anything from the current situation, it’s that digital transformation is now an imperative, not an option. To ensure a safe and secure return to work, each of these phases should be seen as a core part of your wider digital transformation journey.

But what does each phase really mean for you and your workforce in the post-lockdown period?

‘Navigate the now’ means what it says – business continuity is your number one objective. You can help enable this by freeing your employees to easily work, collaborate and service customers remotely.

‘Plan the comeback’ involves creating safe working environments and agile factories, with more resilient, responsive, and transparent supply chains.

The third phase, ‘Shape the new normal’, looks ahead. It includes using cloud technologies like Azure and powerful new apps to gain a competitive edge by freeing up creativity and delivering new services.

Learning from the challenge

The VentilatorChallengeUK required consortium partners to work together rapidly to create and ship life-saving medical products. They needed to coordinate supply chains, set up new processes, make components, share new training content, and deliver the products at scale.

Setting aside the unique circumstances, this experience showed how, when needed, we can come together with the help of digital technology to support operations while controlling business costs.

For example, Microsoft HoloLens headsets enabled consortium employees to be trained rapidly, while keeping at a safe distance from each other. Operatives could rapidly get more help from off-site experts using hands-free video-calling through Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist.

The coordination of multiple suppliers was handled by Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, which helped identify over 800 constituent parts.

This pragmatic approach can help businesses cut time and expense while accelerating output beyond customer expectations. In this case, the consortium was able to ship 1,500 ventilators in three weeks.

Building for success: Five pillars

While Microsoft is often initially thought of as a software developer, we’re also a major product manufacturer. In fact, we ship 42,000 SKUs from 33 facilities to over 100 global subsidiaries and retail locations.

It’s therefore appropriate that the consortium’s success – along with lessons learnt from our own experience as a manufacturer – have helped us see new ways forward. I share these ideas with you here in the belief that they may help you drive greater resilience, stronger operations and ultimately more orders.

1. Transforming the workforce

 When lockdown began, we made Microsoft Teams widely available, including to the NHS. While enabling business continuity, Teams also empowers employees to work at their very best wherever they might be located. One customer saw Teams usage rise from zero to 35,000 users in a week, then up to 80,000 in three weeks. 

2. Engage customers in new ways

Cloud-based cognitive services, such as Microsoft’s Healthcare Bot, have helped healthcare institutions to significantly reduce their workloads. It can cut call volumes by up to 50 percent. This has freed caregivers to focus on treating patients rather than fielding incoming requests.

3. Create more resilient supply chains

The ventilator consortium also brought together Microsoft partners to quickly build and oversee their supply chain within a few weeks. Using Dynamics 365 and PowerApps, our Supply Chain Control Towers and dashboards quickly provided cross-consortium supply chain visibility. This powerful technology can cut inventory investment by 10 percent and boost planning efficiency by up to 60 percent.

4. Build more agile factories

Making processes more agile is a big opportunity. This explains why IDCs 2020 manufacturing trends report says, 60 percent of manufacturers plan to shift their focus from technology to process change management by 2022. For example, you could automate tasks with Dynamics 365. You could also create a ‘digital twin’ of your site to easily monitor and optimise resources, processes, and data.

5. Unlock innovation and deliver new services

All businesses are becoming digital businesses: According to IDC, 70 percent of manufacturers will create 50 percent of new products and services using cloud-based innovation platforms. This would come as no surprise to our consortium partners. They worked seamlessly across three clouds, with data enabling smarter decisions at every step. In fact, the VentilatorChallengeUK itself stands as an exciting case study of what the cloud can help manufacturers achieve.

Despite the turbulence of our times, we remain focused on helping you stay productive, successful, and inspired to achieve more as you return to work. That’s why we’ll be extending this blog into a mini-series. Each one will look at how digital transformation is helping businesses like yours go from strength to strength.

Please check in next week for our next instalment.

Find out more

Join the Microsoft Manufacturing Summit and see how to build a resilient and sustainable future

Learn how to support resilient operations

About the author

Richard is responsible for leading Microsoft’s approach into the UK Manufacturing industry. 

Richard joined Microsoft 14 years ago, where he has held various leadership roles across the business, the most recent of which is to establish and drive Microsoft’s strategy into the UK Industrial sector. He works closely with businesses and partners across automotive, aerospace, and manufacturing focussing on how digital transformation can enable them to achieve more. 

He also works closely with associated industry bodies and consortia, supporting industry collaboration, growth and skills development. 

Richard holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Accounting. 

The post A roadmap for recovery: How manufacturers can return to work safely appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.