Sustainability gets a major push from industrial manufacturers

• Sustainability has the highest adoption of emerging technologies, followed by Sales & Marketing and Aftermarket Services. Sustainability initiatives are not only associated with carbon emission but also related to overall waste management, product design, and material management, etc.
• As-A-Service business model is becoming popular in manufacturing, i.e., Machine As-A-Service model. This has changed the traditional sales and marketing model as, in many cases, the product is leased/used for a certain amount of time. The structure of product selling has also changed. For example, in automotive, now auto OEMs are directly selling cars to the customers without involving the dealers.
• With the advent of connected products, aftermarket services have become a critical part of the PLM-MES-ERP integration. Several critical parameters of the product are checked as a part of aftermarket services. This data can be handy for the design team to improve the product’s performance.

The Bottom Line: The majority of the manufacturers’ focus remained on the applications of emerging technologies in production, but they have realized the possibility of technology applications in other value chain activities. Production and supply chain are still the most critical parts of the manufacturing value chain. Most of the smart manufacturing initiatives will be confined to these two.