Transitioning towards smart factories: the essential strategies for a successful digital transformation

Ten years prior, the predominant debate within the manufacturing sector centered around the optimal approach to managing production facilities. While the need for factories was undisputed, they also presented certain challenges. Today, thanks to technological advancements over the last decade, ownership of such an establishment is central to the business due to the fact that it offers control over its efficiency, agility, and differentiation. The debate now focuses on how to prepare factories for the future, that is, how to turn them into smart factories.

Smart factories are agile, safe, sustainable, efficient, scalable, and reliable, achievements made possible through various digital capabilities that allow them to develop each of these characteristics to a level unthinkable before digitalization. These capabilities, including IT/OT convergence, high availability, real-time analytics, or integrated AI/ML copilot and assistance, allow the sector to go further and address the main challenges it currently faces.

The SAP Digital Manufacturing Solution

To sustain and manage a smart factory, there must be a solution that allows for both a global vision and a detailed component-based view, designed for the different end-users who will handle it and that facilitates the plant’s operation in the most agile, efficient, sustainable, and safe way possible. In the MES/MOM part of the factory, this solution is SAP Digital Manufacturing.

This is a solution launched in 2018, whose differentiating factor is that it operates in the cloud, although it can also be deployed at the plant’s edge. It features quarterly updates and, being an SAP product integrates natively with the installed base of SAP ERP and S4/HANA. The solution has three main pillars:

• Resource Orchestration. This involves short-term scheduling on the day or shift of manufacturing operations, assigning staff to lines (based on, for example, their skills), and planning shifts. The main user would be the planner.

• Manufacturing Execution. These are the operator screens. It manages stock control and operations on the plant floor, includes a fully configurable Product Operator Dashboard (POD), and connects with plant equipment through IIoT.
  
  
• Insights. This layer, constantly evolving and one of the improvement points towards the use of AI or ML engines, offers Top Floor and Shop Floor visibility, analytics with OEE and KPI the code, monitoring and tracking, and increased productivity. It is intended for the plant manager.

Towards the Smart Factory: Integrating the Industrial World and Management Systems

At the foundation of a factory, there are several components. Externally, there are suppliers, logistic services (3PL), and customers; and at the heart of the plant, everything related to the industrial world (machinery, PLCs, sensors, etc.) and management systems. These last two levels, industrial and management, were traditionally isolated from each other. In smart factories, the goal is to integrate both worlds through IT/OT convergence.

To this end, as part of the Digital Manufacturing package, SAP offers a connector (Production Connector) that communicates with different industry standards and all types of manufacturers. Additionally, to ensure data persistence in cases of connectivity loss, Building Blocks can be developed at the Edge.

The idea is to connect these two worlds, to serve as a bridge between factory equipment and all components that give intelligence to smart factories (analytics, etc.). That is, to cover both the traditional MES (Manufacturing Execution System) and MOM (Manufacturing Operations Management) capabilities. Here, in the MOM, comes the entire analytics part, crucial in smart factories and in the SAP solution, which is based on its SAP Analytics Cloud platform.

In conclusion, the SAP Digital Manufacturing solution places factories on the path to the future. Cloud operation, key to accessing updated information from anywhere, is not exclusive and is complemented by the possibility of operating at the edge to solve connectivity or latency issues. Furthermore, like all SAP solutions, it is an open architecture that features possibilities for extension and communication with other applications and agents.

Innovation and Adaptability in Implementing SAP Solutions for the Industrial Sector

At NTT DATA, we have spent years perfecting the implementation of SAP solutions. We have learned to focus on conducting detailed analyses to determine the real control needs of each line, maintaining the continuous operability of production lines, and ensuring that the software never requires unplanned stops, minimizing disruptions. Our strategy includes the use of building blocks that integrate and orchestrate signals from various manufacturers and standards, achieving standardization that adds semantic context to the collected information. Lastly, we always place the end-user at the center of our approach, not only involving them in the solution’s design but also ensuring they are a pillar in supporting their colleagues in the effective use of these tools.