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FROST & Sullivan analysts say increasing global competition will drive the convergence of smart technologies in the industrial sector.
Discrete or process-manufacturing firms in the Asia-Pacific and Australia/New Zealand region are currently focused on competitiveness, says Ivan Fernandez, Industry Director, Industry Practice, at Frost & Sullivan, Australia and New Zealand.
“Resource areas pertaining to people and process innovation are where manufacturing competitiveness is extensively pursued,” he explained.
According to Fernandez, while Europe currently has the edge in embracing the Industrial Internet o Things, Australia, China, India, Japan and Singapore are just a few Asia-Pacific countries who will adopt Internet of Things technologies in their industrial sectors in order to improve their global standing and become more competitive.
“Competition will force manufacturers to innovate and adapt various aspects of their manufacturing systems.”
In particular, smart factories will see embedded systems, Internet connectivity and online data services converging.
Smart factories will be based on the development of automated plant-floors with connected machines that receive and respond to orders from central control systems and human machine interfaces.
The convergence of technologies in smart factories will be focused on addressing a number of challenges such as increasing production efficiency by reducing cost and achieving the desired quality product with minimal wastage, reducing time-to-market, reducing operations and maintenance expenditure (including energy consumption), increasing asset-life and monitoring the supply chain in real-time.
At the core of all this is the development of efficient machine-to-machine (M2M) communications: to transmit information for control of devices on the plant-floor and to collect data about the various processes on the plant-floor. This will allow manufacturers to become even more productive and efficient in their operations via better use of machine data to make operational decisions.
The presence of connected machines can promote faster identification of faults on the plant-floor, provide transparency about the status of various processes, and keep manufacturers informed, thereby helping accelerate intelligent automation of industrial processes.
However, Frost & Sullivan warns substantial development work remains to be done, from standardisation and interoperability efforts on networks, protocols, and interfaces, to security frameworks around increasingly mission-critical infrastructure.
Improving the speed and reliability of communication, enforcing uniform protocols across the organisation, and maintaining a robust security platform are vital for ensuring IoT adoption. Fears over data theft, loss of privacy, and security will need to be addressed, through greater co-operation between automation and instrumentation vendors and software development firms.
Ivan Fernandez will be presenting these insights, “Industrial Sector Convergence, The Development of Smart Manufacturing and Mining Operations” at the 2015 GIL Australia congress to be held at the Hilton Hotel Sydney, Australia on 3rd December 2015.