Practical steps towards digital factory operations

Imagine running a factory where you have complete knowledge and control over your assets. You know exactly what you have, where it is, and how vulnerable it is. Sounds like a dream, right?

Well, with our ServiceNow OTM and passive vulnerability scanning tool, this dream can become a reality. You'll have a comprehensive overview of your assets and OT CMDB, and you'll be able to manage their vulnerabilities effectively. Once you also have OT CMDB and existing IT CMDB, thereafter you are ready to go for enterprise common service data model.

But that's not all. In a world where data is king, you need a single point of data intake for PLC/time series data, application data, and sensor data. You need to harmonize PLC/time series data models into one to OPC UA, and you need on-site storage for recovery and local analytics as well as ISO 22400 based OEE visualization. For this, we offer MS HCI Edge, a solution designed to meet all these needs.

Production operations and cyber security

Now, let's talk about your production operations. You need to operate, visualize, and optimize them in sync with ERP. Our SAP S4HANA and SAP DM (MES) are perfect for this. And if SAP isn't your cup of tea, no worries! We can adapt to your choice of technologies with other offerings.

Lastly, let's address cyber security. It's crucial to know your factory's cyber security status and to take action accordingly. We offer a cyber security assessment to determine your current status and to build a roadmap for secure operations. Once that's done, we can start OT security management services to ensure your factory is always protected.

In short, we offer comprehensive solutions designed to give you complete control over your factory operations. From asset management to data intake, from production operations to cyber security, we've got you covered.

Monitoring operations center powered by AI

Now that you have all the basic capabilities in place at your factory, it's time to take things to the next level. You've been monitoring your factory's functionalities in silos and reacting to issues as they arise. This reactive approach is causing a lot of time and effort to analyze incidents, leading to poor factory availability, performance, and quality. It's time to shift from reactive to proactive operations.

Our Factory IT MOC (monitoring operations center) is the perfect solution for this. Powered by AI, it "sees" factory applications and infrastructure correlations & relationships and analyzes the "coming" performance of your infrastructure or applications based on data. This allows it to predict possible incidents before they occur.

We've modelled the data flows through different entities and developed a playbook/instruction book for our 24/7 monitoring operations center, enabling us to fix potential incidents before they happen. The result? A 50-70% improvement in meantime-to-resolve operations.

But we're not done yet. There's one more challenge to overcome: silo-based continuous improvement. Today, factory development is done in silos, like ERP development, MES development, etc. This results in time-consuming, labour-intensive operations and sub-optimized results.

Digital Kaizen approach breaks down the silos and streamlines

To solve this, we offer a digitalized continuous improvement solution called Digital Kaizen. Based on the SAP Signavio platform, our offering utilizes the digitalized Kaizen methodology; Muri, Mura, and Muda, to utilize a single end-to-end factory database for continuous improvement. This approach breaks down the silos and streamlines your operations, leading to significant improvements in efficiency and productivity.
With these solutions, you're not just keeping up with the best in your class of factory operation - you're setting a new standard.

Now, let's talk about your supply chain traceability and ESG considerations. In today's world, transparency and sustainability are not just nice-to-haves, they're must-haves. We offer SAP and ServiceNow based capabilities, as well as our own FJ developed blockchain-based ESG and Track & Trace solutions. These solutions have been successfully implemented in various industries, from textile origin traceability, end-to-end traceability in engine manufacturing, to ensuring beer traceability from barley to bar.

AI-based operations

Having systematically digitalized all basic operations at your factory, you're now ready for the next big step - AI-based operations. We're currently developing a pre-MVP offering in the Industry Metaverse and AI for manufacturing. This cutting-edge solution will take your factory operations to a whole new level of efficiency and productivity. Would you be interested in being a pre-MVP customer for this?

In conclusion, our comprehensive suite of solutions is designed to help you manage your factory operations more effectively and efficiently, from asset management and data intake to production operations and cyber security. And with our upcoming AI-based operations solution, you'll be at the forefront of the Industry 4.0 revolution.

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Jouko Koskinen will attend Global Smart Manufacturing Summit as chairperson, speaker and panelist. The event takes place in Berlin on 15th–17th May 2024.

Global Smart Manufacturing Summit is at the forefront of digital transformation and innovation within the manufacturing industry. Building upon the success and insights gained from previous editions, this year’s summit promises to be an even more significant milestone in the journey towards smarter, more efficient, and more sustainable manufacturing processes.