CIO Roundtable: Chasing the Elusive Smart Factory? How CIOs Can Make It a Reality

In the new Smart Factory, employees become super-skilled members of a cobotic world (human and robotic) where automatic visual recognition, self-healing, autonomous robots and robotic process automation are commonplace. It is a holistically connected environment that provides instantaneous and rich decision-making data. Employee and customer demands have changed, and Smart Factory technology is paramount for future success.

• Understand how the Smart Factorywill become the key to market leadership and defense against market disruptors
• Learn how Smart Factory technologies and concepts will impact employees, process, technology, and customers
• Explore how peers are progressing in their journeys to next-generation Smart manufacturing

The CIO must consider new demands.

Change now or be left behind by the Competition.

Benefits of creating a Smart Factory:

• S - Self-Optimizing Production Operations
• M - Maintained by Predictive Intelligence Processes
• A - Artificial and Augmented Intelligent Interactions
• R - Realtime Data and Waste Reduction
• T - Technology-based Live Digital Network

Who's investing in Smart Factory?

• 70% Manufacturers are undergoing Smart Factory Initiatives.
• 30% Transformed into Smart Factory operations in the past two years.
• 41% Plan to be converted into Smart Factories within the next four years.

Market leaders are accelerating Smart Factory growth

Now is the time for smart technology adoption

• 229.43BN Size of Sensor Market
• 450K Mobile-Enabled Factory Devices
• 242BN 2022 Machine-to-Machine Revenue
• 12.9BN 2026 Cobotics Projection
• 8.35% IoT Enabled in 2022

Smart Factory Supplier - Market Leaders

• $62BN Siemens AG (revenue)
• 5.7BN ABB Group (income from operations)
• 3.07BN Schneider Electric (automation revenue)
• 3.1BN Teradyne (revenue)

Mature the IT Business

From the fire fighter to the trusted operator

According to our Durable Goods Manufacturing’s 2021 Benchmarking report, strategy is lagging behind other segments, and a lot of focus is still centered around large legacy applications. This problem is magnified by the onset of staffing and retention issues, which are difficult to resolve for Smart Factories. IT can only maintain relevance if it becomes a trusted operator. By leveraging new technology such as Industry 4.0, the IT organization must shift its weight to heavily focus on strategy and applications. The biggest challenge for IT is to get the skilled staffing for the move to the new ecosystem; however, those that achieve it will establish credibility with business stakeholders as transformational innovators.