The Power of Agile Manufacturing in an Industry 4.0 world
What is Industry 4.0?
‘Industry 4.0, which is synonymous with smart manufacturing, is the realisation of the digital transformation of the field, delivering real-time decision making, enhanced productivity, flexibility and agility to revolutionise the way companies manufacture, improve and distribute their products.’
ibm.com
Agile manufacturing evolved from Toyota's just-in-time (JIT) concept, expanding into lean manufacturing, cycle time management, time-based competition, and quick-response manufacturing.
Unlike JIT's focus on production systems, agile manufacturing encompasses both factory floor operations and the growing significance of software in the industry. Its prerequisites hinge on robust digital transformation, emphasising software development facilitating seamless interaction among humans, computers, and production machines.
This integration enables computers to optimise the agile manufacturing system.
To harness the capabilities of Industry 4.0 technologies to drive innovation, enhance efficiency and foster a collaborative environment, companies must go beyond simply transforming their digital ecosystem or automating their production lines.
Companies must establish values, principles, skillsets and mindsets that ensure innovation, optimisation and excellence is ingrained into the DNA of every workstream, project, team and operation across manufacturing organisations.
Fundamental values of Agile Manufacturing
Manufacturing is experiencing an era of acceleration. Across industries and verticals, manufacturers apply agile methods to access faster time to value and increase resilience in times of disruption.
By emphasising rapid iteration, operator augmentation, operational flexibility, and bottom-up innovation, Agile Manufacturing enables a fast response to customer demands while empowering workers to innovate.
Traditional manufacturing organisations must ensure that teams have the right personnel, skills, software, communication channels, ways of working and governance approach in place.
Agile methodologies have driven IT innovation for 30 years and are now expanding beyond software and IT teams. Agile offers a radical departure from traditional management styles and siloed business models.
It is an approach which fosters creativity and product innovation by emphasising value- driven workstreams and empowering a people-centric approach to team structures, hiring, decision-making, work methods, and collaboration.
Conclusion:
Adopting Agile Manufacturing supports organisations in tackling the rapidly shifting nature of the manufacturing landscape. Factors to consider include:
Rapidly evolving environment - Customer demands and regulations are becoming more challenging
Constant technological development - New technologies appear every day
Workforce transformation - Skilled labour shortages as well as the constant need to re-skill workers
More access to information - Democratisation of information through data accessibility requires more transparency
In our next series of articles we explore how global businesses such as Novo Nordisk and John Deere have adopted Agile Manufacturing to embrace an Industry 4.0 world.
References:
https://www.ibm.com/topics/industry-4-0
United Arab Emirates Ministry of Industry & Advanced Technology