Smart manufacturing market in the US to reach US$43.15 B by 2023

The manufacturing sector is second largest in the world after China however, in smart manufacturing initiatives, US dominates the world. US is a globally renowned developed country, home to number of tech giants that have the ability to innovate and especially around emerging technologies of Industry 4.0 which is further expected to drive smart factory/ manufacturing in the country.

  • Definition / Scope
  • Market Overview
  • Top Market Opportunities
  • Market Trends
  • Industry Challenges
  • Technology Trends
  • Regulatory Trends
  • Other Key Market Trends
  • Market Size and Forecast
  • Market Outlook
  • Technology Roadmap
  • Distribution Chain Analysis
  • Competitive Landscape
  • Competitive Factors
  • Key Market Players
  • References

Definition / Scope

Smart Manufacturing is a set of advance sensing, instrumentation, monitoring, controls and process optimization technologies and practices which together merge information and communication technologies along with manufacturing environment for management of energy, productivity and costs across factories and companies.

These smart manufacturing tools and techniques in turn are able to meet the demands and conditions in factory, in supply chain network and in consumer needs. 

The core of the Smart manufacturing includes following: 

  • Technologies and practices
    • Integration of manufacturing technologies with wireless communication technologies and IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things)
    • Real-time adaptation

The SM technology itself can further be categorized into several state-of-art technologies that include: 

  • Industrial Internet of things (IIoT): It enables the interconnection of devices machines and equipments over communication network. The IIoT technology also allows machines to be operated distantly over network.
    • Cloud-computing: The computing system is based on internet where the data that used to be previously stored in computer hardware is floated in form of cloud. Thus, from there data is provided to pool of users. In manufacturing, cloud computing has number of application in product development which helps in bringing production efficiency by leveraging cloud data.
    • Additive Manufacturing (AM): This technology is increasing the number of applications across the manufacturing sector. AM is used across prototyping, altering production lines and bringing high level of flexibility into production processes
    • Machine Intelligence: These technologies are being highly progressed and the employing method of the technology particularly relies on algorithms based on neural networks. These technologies can simplify the troubleshooting process of machines and reduce costs for the manufacturers. For instance, the ability of intelligent robots to self-learn the optimal process and solve problems rather than needing a technician to teach the process can lead to improvements in machine processes.

Market Overview

The manufacturing sector is second largest in the world after China however, in smart manufacturing initiatives, US dominates the world. US is a globally renowned developed country, home to number of tech giants that have the ability to innovate and especially around emerging technologies of Industry 4.0 which is further expected to drive smart factory/ manufacturing in the country. 

Most important technologies used in smart manufacturing are IoT and robotics. Industrial robotics are significant and US has reached peak with its robotic installation and evolution. For instance, technological advancements in vision recognition, skill learning, failure prediction, utilizing AI and man-machine collaboration are some of the features the US has developed in robotics. 

With 13 major automotive global player’s presence in the US and 33% of the total share of robotics of the world occupied by automotive, most of the manufacturing of the passenger cars are carried out with the help of advance robotics and automation technologies. 

The entire North American market is undertaking the fourth industrial revolution and US not only accounts largest share in the region but also around the world. The penetration of smart manufacturing is highest in US i.e. 54% as of 2018. Additionally, only 10% of the manufacturers in the US are not willing to take any smart manufacturing initiatives in next 3-5 years. The other 4 countries with high penetration are Germany, France, UK and China. 

In the US, smart manufacturing is utilized across industrial manufacturing sub-sector the most with 67% penetration, 62% in aerospace & defense production, 50% in automotive production and 37% in medicine and biotech production respectively. . Also, 40% of the discrete manufacturers and 20% of the process manufacturers will be able to provide product as a service enabled by smart manufacturing through the end of 2019. 

Top Market Opportunities

In the US, Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC) which is a NGO and is building the first US Open Smart Manufacturing Platform that is committed for joint industrial-networked information application through large scale demonstration.

The Institution further estimates through its research that, by leveraging these technologies the manufacturing companies will be able to realize a number of benefits that include: 

  • 10% improvement in overall operating efficiency
  • 25% improvement in energy efficiency
  • 25 % reduction in consumer packaging
  • 25% reduction in accidents and
  • 40% reduction in cycle times and in water usage

Among the smart manufacturing technologies, IIoT is one of the major impact creators and with this particular technologies, manufacturers hold immense opportunity to maximize their efficiency and manage their resources well.

The use of sensors to bring intelligence to the production machines and processes is expected to increase the US productivity growth by 1 to 1.5 percentage points and also add $1.8 trillion of new value across manufacturing factories by 2025. It is further estimated that IIoT is expected to reduce factory equipment maintenance costs by 40%, reduce equipment downtime by 50% and extend machine life up by 20% respectively.

This in turn will add $630 billion in economic value annually by 2025.Further, IoT-enabled sensing technologies can be used to control factory hazards where alert or halt option can be applied to the equipment if the worker comes too close to the machine. This could in turn reduce worker injuries by 10-25% generating savings of $225 billion per year. 

Market Trends

Private sector support & funding: There are two major private institution in US namely, SMLC (Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition) and AMT (Association for Manufacturing Technology) that are developing application and initiatives to improve the standards and practices of smart manufacturing in the country.

First, SMLC’s mission is to enable all the manufacturing companies, regardless of size to obtain easy and affordable access to modeling and analytical technologies customized to meet business case objectives without having to change current systems. SMLC is establishing industry standards and developing standards-based reference architecture to support its initiatives.

Another player, AMT is supporting the development of MT Connect that is a free, open standard which enables manufacturing equipment to provide structured, contextualized data with no exclusive format. The platform is operational and is helping manufacturers to structure data well across all aspects of manufacturing from robot, material handler to excel spreadsheet and web-based dashboards. 

IT and OT convergence: Traditionally, the management aspect of the industrial technology was divided between IT and OT (Operational Technology). In the legacy environment, OT was much fragmented where machines maneuvered by the human input where programmed to perform only specific tasks. But in recent times, due to the rise in number of industrial technologies, these are impacting both IT and OT.

As a result, data-driven smart machines receive input from multiple parties such as customer order data, production data and this has led manufacturing process to become more agile, efficient and more visible. As data is becoming more unified across both IT and OT, these two departments are gradually converging as they can no longer operate independently.

With the help of IT and OT data, manufacturers are able to get access to dashboards that give a 360 degree view of the entire organization and also carefully route orders and automate work streams. Thus, this trend has definitely driven the smart manufacturing and made it more integrated across management systems, control and supply chain management systems. 

  • In SME manufacturers’ survey taken by Sikich, lack of awareness, internal expertise and mandatory workforce skills to support the digital technologies are some of the prime reasons for their low rates of investments in smart technologies. Similarly, IoT is one technology within the group of smart technologies that is facing interoperability and standardization challenges and the software on which it runs and the technical issues are yet to be solved to make rapid adoption happen. While many other manufacturers are not aware about where to start from, which technologies to invest first or how to deploy technologies in a way that would solve their business problems and generate positive ROI for them. 
  • Another problem that plagues the smart manufacturing industry is the lack of interoperability and coordination between governments, institutions and businesses in an international competitive environment. There are more than 100 different standardization initiatives involved in these technologies and Industry 4.0 where some institutes are involved in either, B2C models or B2B dimensions while others are focused on underlying connectivity or the application layer. Some initiatives has been made such as ISO and IEC’s joint initiative JTC1 that focuses on integrating these ICT technologies across entire scale of standards. However, the interoperability issues continue to exist in the industry which is not being addressed too soon. 
  • In the US, despite of the huge success of public programs such as MEP, the government is not investing substantially both in terms of historical investment and investments made by that of other countries. For instance, in 1998 budget, US segregated $113.5 million for funding of MEP while the figure was up by only $17 billion in 2016 i.e. $130 billion which is only scarcely higher. Further, as a share of GDP, Japan invests 30 times more, Germany 20 times and Canada invests 10 times more than US in their respective government led institute supporting smart manufacturing practices. Less support from the government has limited the MEP’s potential to carry cutting-edge R&D and also expand their network across more manufactures. 

Industry Challenges

One of the major reason for the manufacturing industry to grow at a slower trend within the US is the lack of investment in digital infrastructure. The US government and Academia have already recognized that there are gaps inside manufacturing processes such as virtual infrastructure in relation to how system interconnect so that digital message is maintained from product design to assembly process.

These gaps are limiting the SME manufacturers in the country to reach the benefits of highly automated manufacturing and also preventing the manufacturing to become highly integrated. 

Another challenge in manufacturing are connectivity and standards. With the absence of standardization, the manufacturing solutions are slow and costly. At present the manufacturing sector deals with various custom integration methods and big manufacturers in the landscape are more interested in having monopolies and develop customers that become dependent on their exclusive solutions.

No single manufacturer till date is able to dominate and establish defacto standards. Manufacturers are tied up with different vendors for different aspects of digital manufacturing, these vendors in turn have started to understand the potential of reaching a larger market and are joining alliances with the government institutions to provide solutions to manufacturers.

Thus, promotion of all the vendors in the market will proliferate practices and tools in the market that is likely to lead to further more non-standardization. 

The third challenge that continues to exist is Cybersecurity. As more cloud, IoT and internet connectivity transports from consumers to manufacturing there will be additional need to assure secure exchanges of information. At present, lack of cybersecurity has led the manufacturers to hesitate to adopt smart manufacturing.

In additional, lack of cyber security skills personnel in the market has also put existing smart manufactures in dilemma and led them to slow down their approach on smart manufacturing developments. 

Another challenge is the right mix of skills as manufacturing job requires mix of variety of skills. The blue collar jobs at the factories is set to be replace by automation, however with advances in technologies, more sophisticated and technical jobs will emerge. According to a Deloitte report, the manufacturing skills gap is one of the major issues in US at present. 

Finally Intellectuals property protection is yet another challenge existing in the manufacturing industry of US. The product engineers and manufacturing operators are located in different places or countries.

The US, for a long time has been outsourcing its factory production and assembling to the Asian countries and mostly in China. There have been instances where China have stolen the IP of the multiple manufacturers and produced goods under their tag.

Thus, this is also one of the reason US is promoting “Make in USA” program and initiating trade war with countries such as China. New rule sand technology for protecting the IP of design need to be developed in the country. Even through, by boycotting China, US may be able to protect its IP but that would also cause an opportunity loss of cheap labor costs in China which US has been taking advantage of till now. 

Technology Trends

IIoT-Developments in smart sensor technology, network connectivity and the evolution of cloud computing have all supported the adoption and rise of Industrial IoT.

The IIoT is headed to have a major impact on manufacturing industry and is forecasted to create an astounding value of $15 trillion of global GDP by 2030. Some of the major application of IoT being leveraged across manufacturing sector include, predictive maintenance, cloud based AI & ML that enable production efficiency and seamless quality end-product. 

Robotics-The robotic technology is an old and one of the initially existing technology in the manufacturing sector. However, with the advancements in IoT, cloud computing and AI, manufacturing robotics have also become more advanced. The type of robot used in the manufacturing are commonly the collaborative robots or cobots which is likely to become bigger part of workforce in near future.

The market size of cobots will reach $12.23 billion and increase up to 8 times from 2018 to 2025. The cobots utilized at factory sites use artificial intelligence and have cognitive abilities similar to that of a human. They also use computer technology to identify any setbacks in items, automate the transportation of materials in production process or warehouse and also avoid accidents using predicative intelligence. 

Cloud computing-The smart manufacturing is also increasingly connected and the information exchanged between the connected products/devices are further enhanced by technology called cloud computing. The cloud technology is enabling impeccable connectivity and providing opportunities for manufacturers to develop smart factories and track products through their lifecycle.

Most of the advancements in the industry is backed by internet, cloud and IoT. New 5G networks are further, boosting the intelligent manufacturing, accelerating businesses ability to process large amounts of real-time data quickly and via internet from any location. Further, cloud computing has its own limitations such as: need to connect to internet to download or upload information which is shifting the trend towards edge computing and moreover to cloud and edge (hybrid) computing model.

Edge computing allows manufacturers to run applications and store data with on-premises infrastructure that is connected to the cloud. 

Digital Twin-Digital twin in the new concept which has an exclusive application in manufacturing, it is a model where a digital replica (simulation) is created of a real-world system. The data from AI, machine learning, software analytics update and change along with their physical counterparts in real-time.

These digital twins are used across the entire production process which allows manufactures to have faster, less expensive R&D, create safer and high-quality products and enable decision-making. Some of the American manufacturers such as GE (General Electrics) have implemented digital twins for their parts it delivers to power plants, wind farms and electrical grids. HoloLens engineers at GE are also using AR technology to peek inside and interact with the digital twins without physically touching them. 

Additive Manufacturing (AM) – It has begun to gain momentum and the market value of this technology in manufacturing industry is expected to reach $55.8 billion by 2027. Some of the OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturers) such as Stryker, Caterpillar, and Airbnb are already investing in the technology.

Besides these companies, GE and Boeing have already taken charge by investing in AM. With AM, these manufacturers are becoming able to create customized products at a lower cost. For aerospace tools, manufacturers can easily design a part, print a tool and produce the part within a week’s time. For example, automotive seat supplier TS Tech built a check fixture using both 3D-printing and CNC machining, which resulted in cutting costs by 31%.

Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality: There are numerous uses of AR and VR in manufacturing industry. The technology is nascent at present and is likely to have more uses as it becomes more available. A number of companies are using AR headsets that overall AR into real objects.

AR technology can be used to allow expert assistance especially in case where manufacturers operations are distributed to a large area and inspectors & technicians need to travel between locations to inspect a machine, part or product. Thus AR/VR technologies can look through the eyes of operator and provide guidance, troubleshoot and support from anywhere in the world. 

Regulatory Trends

  • MEP (Manufacturing Extension Partnership)- It functions as a body of National Institute of Standards and Technology at the US Department of Commerce and works mostly around SME manufacturers in the country and help them in gaining technical & digital capabilities. Currently, the program is active in all 50 states and operates 600 field offices comprised of 1300 technical experts and 2300 allied facility providers solving different challenges of the manufactures involved and identifying their opportunities for growth. In general, MEP offers its clients a wealth of resources aligned across five major areas: technology acceleration, supplier development, sustainability, workforce and continuous improvement. In addition, MEP places technologies and innovation developed through research at federal laboratories, educational associations and companies directly in hands of US manufacturers. 
    • For every $1 investment, MEP generated $19 in new sales growth and $21 in client investment which is also equal to $2.2 billion in new sales every year. Additionally, for every $1978 of federal investment, MEP creates or retains one manufacturing job. As of 2018 alone, 25,445 manufactures connected with the program and added up the existing 94,033 manufacturers. Until 2018, in an aggregate, MEP has contributed to $17.1 billion of cost savings, $98.7 billion in sales and also helped create or retain more than 884,596 jobs. 
  • Manufacturing USA which was launched in 2012 under the presidency of Obama is constituted of 14 manufacturing innovation institutes that run on public-private led fund. The association is driven to develop advanced manufacturing product and process technologies, contribution to their commercialization and developing workforce skills around advanced manufacturing technologies. It plays a major role in revitalizing US’s industrial competitiveness and help manufacturers to gain competencies in advance technology products and processes. Four institutes within Manufacturing USA Coalition are supporting smart-manufacturing related technology. In 2011, IMI (Institutes of Manufacturing Innovation) was launched with focus on expanding additive manufacturing skills. Secondly, Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII) was founded that helps factories in US to deploy digital manufacturing & design technologies, this in turn is making these factories more cost competitive and productive. Thirdly, The Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI) aims to speed up development and adoption of next-generation manufacturing technologies but mostly focused around manufacturers operating in areas such as low-cost, energy-efficient manufacturing of advanced polymer composites for vehicles, wind turbines, and compressed gas storage. Finally, the Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII) emphasizes mainly on advances such as smart sensors, data analytics, and controls in manufacturing among others. 
    • Among these four institutes, DMDII plays the most profound role in helping American manufacturing companies go through digital transformation with the help of multiple technologies. The four areas of focus for the institute is: Design & product development, future factory denoting digital integration and control, next, agile & resilient supply chain and finally cybersecurity in manufacturing. In addition, DDMI has been helping manufactures to access free, open-source software project to develop collaboration and engineering platform that can become an online gateway to digital manufacturing. Besides, DDMII has also established a data-driven system called “Visual Decision Support System” for manufacturers. The system will be able to transform thousands of real-time existing data points into collection of cloud-backed panels to facilitate decision-making about what to produce, when to produce it, and with what components and production resources. With such competencies, DDMII have led to number of benefits for its members such as 98% reduction in line stoppages, 86% reduction in on-site inventory and 50% reduction in indirect material handling labor thus, increasing overall manufacturers’ productivity by almost 10%.

Other Key Market Trends

The manufacturing industry is moving towards a major trend where the companies involved in the industry are integrating their existing systems with new technology rather than transforming entire legacy system into modern one.

As the manufacturing industry itself is becoming more proliferated with IoT, intelligence, businesses are also enhancing their existing traditional systems to keep up with emerging technologies. The current machines & equipments in the factories are being embedded with smart sensors that collect detailed information in real-time. 

Lately, governments and consumers around the world are holding the manufacturing companies accountable for the environmental consequences of their offerings and proof shows that they are willing to pay for it.

Almost 75% of the Millennials and GenZ pay a premium for sustainable products and services and are more aware about the importance of sustainability than any other generation. Thus, an increasing number of manufacturers are taking concrete steps to become environmentally conscious.

Further, companies are also making additional effort to reduce the amount of waste, greenhouse gases and other pollution created by the byproducts of manufacturing process. 

As the manufacturing environment is continuously being filled up with products that are mature and full of features that have become common. Thus, to differentiate, manufacturers are moving towards customer-centric approach and identifying new-service based models to grow profitability and reputation among the connected customers of modern world.

This trend is also known as servification of manufacturing where, digitization is transforming the way products are being designed and advances in technologies has enabled manufacturers to create custom products suited for varied needs of customers rather than producing products in the same traditional standardized method.

With such service, a customer is able to send their personalized order for a part, including appropriate design files and specs also based on workload, materials, staff availability, location, and scale whereas, manufacturers are able to fulfill the order effectively and efficiently. 

Market Size and Forecast

  • As of 2018, the global smart manufacturing industry was valued at $ 230.99 billion and is expected to increase at a CAGR of 9.22% during 2019-2024 period and reach $391.29 billion by 2023. 
  • As of 2018, the North America smart manufacturing industry is approximately 27.1% of the global smart manufacturing industry and was valued at $69.1 billion
  • As of 2018, US accounts more than 54% of the North American smart manufacturing market, where the market size of the country is $37.3 billion.

Market Outlook

  • The global smart manufacturing industry is expected to rise at a CAGR of 9.22% during 2019-2024 period and reach $391.29 billion by 2023. . 
  • The North American Smart manufacturing market is expected to increase at a CAGR of 8.63% during 2019-2023 period and reach $104.6 billion by 2023. 
  • The US Smart manufacturing market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15.75% and reach $43.15 billion by 2023. 

Technology Roadmap

  • Digital Supply Networks (DSN): The supply chain of the manufacturing industry is likely to transform due to increased digitalization and technologies such as AI and sensors to create supply chain system that’s completely transparent, traceable and connected. Thus, manufacturers and their supply chain partners are likely to get connected in real-time and address complications almost as they come up. 
  • E-procurement: Processes in manufacturing such as inventory control, invoicing and price negotiation will be easily handled through online documentation and require less physical paperwork. These digital procurement platforms coordinate with the company’s infrastructure through smart facility technologies. Thus, e-procurement will lead to improved efficiency and will reduce costs, further, it will also increase the ability of manufacturers to focus more on value based enterprises such as predictive analytics and risk assessment. 
  • Blockchain: In the manufacturing sector/factory of future, more focus will be laid on data, transactions and crypto currency. The blockchain will support areas such as data management and supply chain claims. The technology offers full transparency, thus it will also become essential across auditing functions. 

 Distribution Chain Analysis

Moving from B2B to B2B2C models: The shift is also anticipated as a customer-centric decision which doesn’t apply to manufacturers that manufacture final products but also to businesses across the supply chain from raw materials suppliers to parts manufacturers, that must consider the needs of end user and how their service impact the customers.

This trend has caused number of benefits to customers such as better service and more transparency but it has also led to few challenges for the B2B businesses as in order to serve the customers better, they must gather more information about the user which is available to B2C businesses with whom customers directly encounter.

However, with help of IoT technology manufacturers are getting insights on how their products are being used, whether features are being utilized or is being able to fulfill customer needs. By identifying these pain points, the manufacturers are able to improve the iterations of the product in future and improve sales. 

D2C channel: To gain profits and improve customer experience, some manufacturers are already dropping the traditional retailing idea and directly catering to the customers. The middlemen in the supply chain are being removed which is allowing manufacturers to connect directly to customer and collect more precise data from them.

Thus, manufacturers are being able to develop more personalized experiences i.e. 75% of the customers prefer to have so. The US based eyewear manufacturer, Warby Parker achieved a valuation of $1.2 billion and succeeded with D2C sales initially via e-commerce platforms and then with their physical locations as well. Other multi-channel brands such as Nike and Adidas have also increased their D2C efforts by two-fold.

For instance, Nike announced a new company placement, the Consumer Direct Offense that includes the creation of a Nike Direct organization, dedicated to devise strategies to deepen relationships with customers. Also, Adidas on other hand, launched Avenue A, limited –edition boxes that ship selected women’s apparel and footwear subscribers.

Besides these, D2C subscription boxes have also increased tremendously and one of the most successful companies to leverage this is Dollar shave Club. In early 2018, after the subscription box aggregator My Subscription Addition indexed roughly 3,000 boxes, major retailers across the country such as Amazon, Target, and Walmart among others have been joining subscription boxes. 

Competitive Landscape

  • In the US, manufacturing sector alone contributes 12.3% of the GDP. Apart from multinational giants, there are more than 230,000 SME manufacturers (i.e. 98.5% of the total manufacturing establishments) in the country that are the essential backbone of the manufacturing supply chains. These SME manufacturers constitute considerable share of total workforce in the US followed by exports where in 2017, 98.5% of the US manufacturing exporters were from SME’s contributing 19.1% of the total manufacturing exports in the US. 
  • As of 2018, 97% of the manufacturers with over $10 billion in revenues, 79% of the manufactures with revenues between $1 billion to $10 billion and 74% of the manufacturers with revenue less than $200 million had engaged in some kind of smart technology or automation across their factories/businesses. 
  • Multinational manufacturers such as Ford, GE among others have significantly invested in the IIoT technology and become smart manufacturing companies but majority of the manufacturers (i.e. 77%) are expected to have no plans to implement such IIoT technologies. While, out of the remaining 33% that are investing in IIoT presently have only investments limited to 5% of their sales and relatively little R&D associated with the investments. Especially, the SME manufacturers lacked internal expertise and workforce skills to support digital technologies. 
  • In the US, smart manufacturing standards have been developed in such manner that, the industry is consortia-led, consensus based and is market driven. The smart manufacturing process has government agencies involved in standards-making process and other private parties also bring their expertise, needs, concerns and requirements to improve the standards. Some of the private led consortia are IIC (Industrial Internet Consortium) and spans a number of fields including energy, healthcare, manufacturing, public sector and transportation. Together, the programs & funding led by government & private institution run and monitor the smart manufacturing standards and practices in the country. 

Competitive Factors

  • GE: The multinational manufacturing company has a plant located in Schenectady, New York which is worth $170 million and produces massive batteries for equipments such as cellphone towers and power plants. The factory consists of more than 10,000 IoT enabled sensors spread across the 180,000 square feet of manufacturing space and collects information on temperature, humidity, air pressure and machine operating data in real time. This enables GE to screen production as it happens and also allows to make adjustments to process that enhances production efficiencies and conserve costs. 
  • Ford: The manufacturer has place IoT sensor on every production equipment in the factory located in its River Rouge facility outside Detroit. With sensors, the company is able to identify flaws in upstream and downstream machines and track most minute of deviation that is likely to occur if lack of co-ordination occurs within two machines. Thus, the problem is immediately identified and fixed. 
  • Wurth USA, an auto-parts supplier developed an intelligent camera technology called “iBins” system which fills the level of supply boxes and automatically records the supplies as needed. In future the company has plans to integrate IoT enabled autonomous transport vehicles that work in alignment with robots to travel around the factory floor and automatically find and select proper materials for production process and enhance logistics systems. 
  • Procter & Gamble: Its diaper manufacturing factories are able to produce 1000 diapers per minute and this is assisted by the high-speed converters that is made with 30 different materials. Further, due to the fast production capacity of its machines P&G needs to check for irregularities in milliseconds for which, the company utilizes sensors, cameras and digital imaging to achieve 15-20 quality checks on every single diaper. The company supports both product and process innovation and currently operates 25 plants across the US. 

Key Market Players

The top players in the Smart Manufacturing Industry that stand out in each segment/category are follows: 

  • Hosting: Microsoft
  • Industrial IoT Platforms: Microsoft, General Electrics (GE), PTC and Siemens
  • Analytics: Uptake
  • Microchips: Nvidia
  • Sensors: Texas Instruments Incorporated
  • Cyber-security: Claroty
  • Systems Integrator: Accenture
  • Additive Manufacturing: General Electrics
  • Augmented Reality: Upskill
  • Collaborative robots: ABB
  • Connected Machine Vision: Cognex
  • Drones/UAV’s: PINC
  • Self-driving Vehicles: Clearpath robotics

References

  1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331873053_Status_of_Smart_Manufacturing_in_the_United_States
  2. https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/smart-factory-market
  3. https://www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dti-smart-factories-full-report-rebranded-web-version_16032018.pdf
  4. https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/north-america-smart-factory-market
  5. http://info.microsoft.com/rs/157-GQE-382/images/EN-US-CNTNT-Report-2019-Manufacturing-Trends.pdf
  6. http://www2.itif.org/2018-manufacturing-digitalization.pdf
  7. https://www.manufacturing-operations-management.com/manufacturing/2015/09/drivers-and-challenges-for-a-smart-manufacturing-future.html
  8. https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/the-smart-manufacturing-market-is-expected-to-expand-at-a-compound-annual-growth-rate-cagr-of-1575-during-the-2018-2023-2019-03-19
  9. https://www.thomasnet.com/insights/factory-of-the-future-technological-trends-in-manufacturing/
  10. https://iot-analytics.com/the-leading-industry-4-0-companies-2019/

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