| | DECEMBER 20228Although today smart manufacturing is one of the buzzwords in the industry, it mainly refers to an almost completely-automated factory that keeps manual processes to the minimum, for decreasing human error. It is mainly characterized by the adoption of advanced technologies which comprise machine-to-machine communication, AI, ML & automation.Fortunately, the pandemic has been one of the major drivers for smart manufacturing adoption, and that has compounded these primary factors which motivates smart manufacturing at present. Supply chain issues, remote work & labor shortages, sustainability and ESG demands and the need to keep up and communicate with customers. According to research by Fictiv, it was found that ninety-seven percent of manufacturers stated that customer demands were shifting, and it was specifically towards enhanced sustainability and quality. Some of the top trends leveraged by the smart manufacturingindustry include.Production MonitoringNew solutions leverage Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning together with data that is being gathered by Industrial IoT devices to render advanced levels of manufacturing monitoring. Deloitte states that this kind of close monitoring would be needed to facilitate firms to keep up with the fast-moving ESG landscape & quantify moves for lowering energy consumption.Production monitoring is one of the most important trends which is new and helps plants onboard to predictive maintenance faster & with less hassle. It comprises various other phases such as predictive monitoring, predictive maintenance, & PdM as a Service.These technologies can actually detect some of the earliest signs of imminent failures, leaks, as well as bottlenecks in processes, as well as helping employees in identifying wasteful inefficiencies, find environmental hazards, & correct them before they actually become serious.AutomationAutomation is rapidly spreading rapidly across organizations, by utilizing Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning for RPA for soft administrative tasks such as invoicing, vendor management as well as inventory management & automating the manufacturing processes. Factories are either adopting collaborative robots, or cobots that work together with human employees for extending their capabilities & delivering a safer working environment.Taking it a step further, one of the Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2022 of Gartner is hyper automation. This involves OPTIMIZING THE EFFICIENCY IN SMART MANUFACTURINGTHE PANORAMA
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