Plant & Works Engineering November 2022

News 0 8 | Plant & Works Engineering www.pwemag.co.uk November 2022 With companies facing unprecedented financial challenges and energy cost pressures, the evidence shows that nearly half of the manufacturers are already at the “evolution” stage of their digital adoption maturity stages. Those manufacturers who have the adequate cash flow to continue adopting new technologies are performing better in the current challenging environment, while those who do not have adequate funds are being left behind with falling productivity and weaker resilience. The story is largely positive: over three-quarters of manufacturers have increased spending on digital technologies and just 6% said their investment has dropped, seeing digital as a critical area which cannot be allowed to stall. Our research also revealed that increased production flexibility, labour efficiency and improved profitability top the table as the main benefits behind the adoption of digital. The focus is now on production areas such as equipment maintenance, with 45% of businesses currently introducing new digital tools to detect faults quickly and keep production at an optimum level. We can see that manufacturers are addressing current supply issues and looking for solutions within the digital technologies; three in ten manufacturers are using digital tech to improve their supply chain management with a further 40% looking at how to introduce digital analysis in this area. Britain’s manufacturers continue to move forwards, transforming their businesses by taking advantage of the digital adoption revolution to build greater resilience, increase their international competitiveness and improve productivity. Over two-thirds of respondents to our survey said that past investment in digital technologies had paid off and left them better able to cope with the current challenging economic conditions. Some 58% said they were able to move quickly and provide new critical components where needed and a further 40% said it helped their business increase productivity by streamlining processes using powerful big data analysis tools. There are many factors that make digital adoption successful with an impact on productivity, it’s not only a matter of getting a new piece of equipment. The evidence shows the necessity of a vision that consists of leadership, knowledge and finance. The majority of those who have invested in digital expect productivity to increase (63%) and to date, a typical manufacturing business (83%) has replaced up to 10% of its manufacturing processes with technology, automation, and data connectivity. However, there is still much to do, and Government must continue to play its part to supercharge digital progress in manufacturing. The Made Smarter programme – which helps companies identify where digital adoption can best help their company boost productivity and delivers hands-on implementation support – must be rolled out across all the regions of the UK. The scheme should be expanded to include industrial decarbonisation as digital and green increasingly go hand-in-hand, with digital solutions to decarbonisation key to success. In addition, the Research and Development (R&D) tax credit should be expanded immediately to include capital expenditure. By MAKE UK chief executive, Stephen Phipson MAKE uk - the manufacturers’ organisation monthly news comment been helping customers across all industries to boost their productivity and today offer the industry’s most comprehensive digital twin. When Siemens Xcelerator is connected to Omniverse, we will enable a real-time, immersive metaverse that connects hardware and software, from the edge to the cloud with rich data from Siemens’ software and solutions.” Jensen Huang, founder and CEO, NVIDIA, concluded: “Siemens and NVIDIA share a common vision that the industrial metaverse will drive digital transformation. This is just the first step in our joint effort to make this vision real for our customers and all parts of the global manufacturing industry. “The connection to Siemens Xcelerator will open NVIDIA’s Omniverse and AI ecosystem to a whole new world of industrial automation that is built using Siemens’ mechanical, electrical, software, IoT and edge solutions.” Both companies say the partnership brings together complementary technologies and ecosystems to help realise the industrial metaverse.