Earlier this week, Deloitte launched its ‘Smart Factory Fabric’, a pre-configured suite of Cloud-based Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
So what is it all about?
According to Deloitte, the app suite is “designed to accelerate smart factory transformations for companies with manufacturing operations.”
Powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) IoT, Deloitte built this to deliver smart factory capabilities to industrial enterprises.
The Deloitte Smart Factory Fabric suite of services helps companies improve:
- Their operational performance
- Reduce costs by increasing visibility
- Optimize production
- Improve quality, and
- Minimize unplanned downtime associated with running a smart factory
According to a statement by Deloitte, the Smart Factory Fabric is designed for companies with manufacturing operations; sample industry sectors include: aerospace and defense; industrial products; pharmaceutical and medical devices; automotive; government; high tech; oil, gas and chemicals; and power and utilities.
“For companies with complex manufacturing operations, implementing a smart factory solution at industrial scale can be daunting, but imperative for those who wish to remain competitive today. That’s why we’ve worked with AWS on a smart factory offering,” said Andy Daecher, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and Deloitte Digital IoT U.S. practice lead in a statement.
Smart Factory Fabric capabilities and potential benefits include:
- Real-time optimization of shop floor performance: Allows operators to identify overall equipment effectiveness that quantifies the availability, performance, quality and location of each asset and production line. It also realises better machine utilisation; and optimises production capacity, utilisation, and scheduling.
- Visibility and analytics across a network of factory operations: Rapidly connecting devices enables the collection of streaming, transactional and machine status data onto AWS. It also provides the ability to create common asset and process models. Machine health monitoring and trending allows a shift from calendar to condition based and predictive maintenance; consistent factory, asset and line performance analysis across plants activates opportunities for optimization.
- Dynamic workforce management: Enables the scheduling of shop floor resources based on machine, inventory, and labor constraints. It also provides visibility into real-time inventory and tools/asset positions and workforce status; delivers dynamic crew planning and work allocation including risk-based (stochastic) materials requirement planning (MRP), predictive line-of-business (LOB) management, risk-adjusted span and lead time management.
- Efficient technology navigation and implementation: Pre-built persona-based screens and dashboards for operators, process managers, engineering managers, quality coaches, plant supervisors, and manufacturing executives allows for rapid configuration and deployment of smart factory capabilities designed to provide the right level of detail at the right time to enable critical decision-making.
- Scalable AWS IoT platform enabling global edge to cloud deployments: AWS IoT services reside in multiple AWS Regions for global scale to help customers acquire, process, and consume data easily and securely.
Image Credit: Deloitte