These trends are driven by the need for increased efficiency, cost reduction, and improved scalability in the IT industry. By automating processes and virtualizing resources, organizations can enhance their operational capabilities, reduce manual errors, and adapt to changing business needs more effectively.
How fast are these technologies moving? By 2025, more than 50 billion devices will be connected to the IIoT, generating 79.4 zettabytes of data yearly. Annual installations of industrial robots, which have increased two times to about 450,000 since 2015, will grow to about 600,000 by 2022, even as 70 percent of manufacturers will be regularly using digital twins by 2022. Across industries, about 10 percent of today’s manufacturing processes will be replaced by AM by 2030.
Process Automation:
With advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), businesses are increasingly adopting process automation to streamline operations and improve efficiency. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is being used to automate repetitive and rule-based tasks, freeing up employees to focus on more complex and strategic activities. Intelligent automation combines RPA with AI capabilities, enabling systems to make decisions and perform tasks that traditionally required human intervention. This trend is expected to continue as organizations seek to optimize their processes and enhance productivity.
Virtualization:
Virtualization refers to the creation of virtual versions of hardware, operating systems, storage, and other IT resources. It allows businesses to consolidate and optimize their infrastructure, leading to cost savings, increased flexibility, and scalability. Server virtualization, in particular, has become prevalent, enabling multiple virtual machines to run on a single physical server. Virtualization technologies are also being extended to networks (network virtualization) and storage (storage virtualization), providing greater agility and easier management of resources.
Why it matters
For an idea of the broad implications of next-level process automation and virtualization, consider that 50 percent of today’s work activities could be automated in the next few decades, spurring powerful changes to the future of work, labour costs, and public policy. This will occur as robots become ever more intelligent and capable. Production will gain scalability even as production lead times decline. This trend will shift competition toward capital expenditure investments in automation technology and toward the social, emotional, and technological skills needed as intelligent machines take over more physical, repetitive, and basic cognitive tasks—all while compressing value chains as companies use AM to make products and components closer to home.
Applications
Automotive
An automotive OEM used the IIoT to connect 122 factories and more than 500 warehouses globally, while optimizing manufacturing and logistics processes, consolidating real-time data, and implementing analytics and machine-learning throughput.
Manufacturing
A big manufacturer used collaborative robots (cobots) mounted on automatic guided vehicles to load pallets directly, without human involvement, increasing operational efficiency and safety.
Municipalities
The city of Carson, NV, created a digital twin to simulate future water supply based on usage hours, optimizing water availability and saving operating costs.
Aerospace
A global aerospace supplier prototyped a 25 percent lighter 3-D-printed fuel nozzle it could quickly produce at scale, with no increase in complexity.
