Future Factories: Manufacturing transformation through Technology

The fourth industrial revolution is reshaping the global economy, and managers and workers are embracing digital technologies quite gracefully. Future companies are more than just a rethink of the production method.  

FREMONT, CA: Embracing digital technologies has become the new norm, which has led to the merging of the internet and factory floors. It has given rise to smart factories and more efficient and cost-effective manufacturing. Latest data-driven production systems have a higher percentage of performance. New technologies can make work less repetitive and diversified, far from creating workplaces in which robots replace humans. Factories now produce and exchange data amongst themselves. This allows smart factories to address customer requirements in real time and offer highly personalized products.

Smart sensors allow advanced tracking of products; digital technologies empower businesses to create connected supply chains and ship parts only as needed. Robots can handle orders more efficiently, and engineers can use predictive analytics to forecast risk and customer behavior.

If a digital tool is introduced to enable managers to schedule tasks and track their execution, the system now shows live performance metrics of workers. This will increase the reliability of processes and the effectiveness of machines. Sensors automatically monitor color, pH value, viscosity, and other product details, which makes manual sampling unnecessary. This helps employees in spotting quality deviations on time.

For small factories, on-time delivery and rapid prototyping are also essential elements. Many companies have embraced these principles as it placed its 3D printing facility within UPS WorldPort. The manufacturing technology explosion provides companies not only with additive manufacturing solutions but also with more traditional CNC machining plus rapid injection-molding abilities.

Adapting to change is not easy, and for manufacturers, it intends implementing new market models and abandoning traditional practices. The fourth industrial revolution is sure to future-proof the factory floor in the coming days. 

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