TECHNOLOGY
DATA IN MANUFACTURING : THE EVOLUTION OF ITS USE “ If we take a step back and we look at the pre COVID world , companies and manufacturing companies have been investing in data for quite some time now ,” explains Francisco Betti . Head of Advanced Manufacturing and Production at the World Economic Forum ( WEF ). With trends such as the fourth industrial revolution , climate change , sustainability and geopolitical tensions , “ forcing companies to find new ways to stay connected globally ,” organisations are being pushed “ to start exploring what data , data analytics , connectivity and cloud could deliver ,” explains Betti . What started as a use case in a single production line within a specific facility , has evolved into the supply chain , “ and now we are talking about this hyperscale ecosystem in which data is collected all the way through , so that there is a continuum data thread or digital thread to deliver new value .
“ Now , what COVID-19 implemented is a massive acceleration of all those investments and efforts that companies hadn ’ t put in place before the crisis started . So if you look at the past 10 years there was a progressive increment , that suddenly COVID created a sort of tipping point in which a major acceleration started to take place . I don ’ t know of any company that we work with that is not massively invested in data analytics today as they look at how to build resilience , be more efficient , more productive and mitigate risks in a post pandemic situation ,”
When it comes to data , Betti adds . contemplates that “ what is interesting is that the way in which companies operate is no longer as standalone entities , they ' re already part of broader ecosystems and those ecosystems are hyper-connected . What is flowing from one company to the other is what is flowing across an entire supply and value chain . These hyper-connected value networks are going to be the rule for the way
110 April 2021