What It Means for Manufacturers to Go Digital

Sandvik Coromant (Fairlawn, NJ) recently hosted a “Digitalization on Machining” panel of leading digital manufacturing industry experts at the Center for Manufacturing Innovation in Greenville, SC. William Sobel of VIMANA (Emeryville, CA) was one of the panelists during this Facebook Live event, and other participants included representatives from GE Power, Cisco, Sandvik, Okuma, Microsoft, Mastercam, Rockwell Automation, MakeTime, Praemo, and the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing.

The panel went into detail on what it means for manufacturers to go digital, and reviewed the difficulties of starting from nothing by offering simple solutions and valuable tips on how to begin, including these three key takeaways from their discussion:

1. Digitization, the digital factory is an imperative

• It’s here now, and growing exponentially.
• Within five years, the digital factory will be ubiquitous.
• Early adopters will stay in business and gain a competitive advantage.

2. Why go digital?

• Improve profit: grow revenue and reduce operating costs. Achieve an average of a three percent boost in incremental revenue on each machine – this alone justifies the technology investment.
• Return in Investment is quick – ROI can be achieved within six weeks: just by understanding device utilization.
• The investment is reasonable: the cost is not prohibitive, just get started. Think big, start small, and expand rapidly.

    3.  How to get started on the digital journey

• Some systems are turnkey and can be implemented today and leveraged as technology evolves, where software providers enable the ability to (1) Connect and capture data from disparate devices: CNC, manual machines, additive; (2) Start with three data elements and see improved operational performance; (3) analyze and visualize the data for insight; and (4) have experts help interpret the data and guide improvement actions.

Bottom line: Start now, don’t get left behind. To see the full video replay of the panel please click here.

www.goVIMANA.com, www.sandvik.coromant.com