At the start of 2020, there were all manner of manufacturing topics to be discussed. And then suddenly, there was only one.<\/p>\n
It would be difficult to overstate the impact of Covid-19’s disruption on manufacturers. Almost across the board, this industry has seen supply chains breaking, cash ceasing to flow and production lines grinding to a halt.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s unsurprising that the coronavirus outbreak has taken up the whole bandwidth of industry thought, writing and discussion for the last few months.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s especially interesting though, is the fact there are marked parallels between the most critical topics both pre-crisis and today. Much of the technology being examined now \u2013 in terms of helping the manufacturing sector to adapt, recover and become more resilient \u2013 is the same technology that was discussed at the start of the year in the context of driving efficiency, sustainability and innovation.<\/p>\n
Indeed, digital transformation almost always delivers continuous, evolving and sometimes unexpected benefits to an organisation. It\u2019s rarely a single solution to a single problem. In fact, the most important advantages often turn out to be those that were barely considered when the process was initiated.<\/p>\n
Take supply chain optimisation. Many customers use our technology to tame the near-overwhelming complexity of their supply chains. With a combination of IoT and other innovations, we help them to map their whole ecosystem in real time, and use AI to make decisions faster and more accurately. Up till a few months ago, this was chiefly for purposes of financial, logistical and environmental efficiency. But since the mass disruption to the global economy, it\u2019s become a matter of business continuity, and in some cases, even survival.<\/p>\n
In the same way, industry leaders agree that 2020\/2021 will see a great acceleration in digitalisation initiatives like smart factories, connected product innovation, remote controls and above all: automation.<\/p>\n
The following articles were written by different subject matter experts from Microsoft. And they straddle the difficult, yet fascinating period from pre-outbreak to lockdown, through to the present day, when societies are taking cautious steps back to normality.<\/p>\n
In this article<\/a>, which was written before the coronavirus outbreak, Max Tchapeyou explains why manufacturing needs to focus on workforce transformation. And why now is the perfect time to attract younger and more diverse talent.<\/p>\n In another \u2018pre-outbreak\u2019 article, Patrick Van Loon explains<\/a> why manufacturers get stuck in \u2018pilot purgatory\u2019 with AI and ML projects. And he draws lessons from Henry Ford\u2019s ground-breaking production line for how to escape it.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a highly relevant article<\/a> by Valerio Frediani, who talks to Koen Groothaert from steel wire manufacturer, Bekaert, about a project called \u2018Digital Way of Working\u2019. It\u2019s about introducing Smart Manufacturing Apps, which will have actually proven invaluable since the coronavirus outbreak.<\/p>\n Roger Mueller on connected product innovation<\/a> is equally essential reading. He sets out in detail how manufacturers can continue innovating while engineers across a distributed process remain at home.<\/p>\n