Why cloud is the future of intelligent manufacturing

Undoubtedly, COVID-19 has been a catalyst that’s caused exponential acceleration and demand in the last 12 months. Now more than ever, manufacturers need to keep their production and supply chains moving in a digital world, which places a spotlight on efficiency and agility. But it’s not always the need to change that’s in question; it’s about how intelligent manufacturing can be achieved and why cloud is such as a crucial factor.

In a digital world there are two types of manufacturer: disruptors and followers. While manufacturers attempt to cement their position as a market disruptor, many find themselves struggling to navigate the transformation required to truly embrace Industry 4.0.

The key enabler for this type of disruption is cloud.

Taking a data-centric approach

To realize true digital potential, manufacturers must stop relying on legacy IT and place cloud-scale data management at the heart of their business. A cloud-first approach forms the bedrock of AI, ML, automation, and smart factories, enabling businesses to improve their agility and increase competitive advantage. When done right, manufacturers are able to leverage AI to provide real-time insight into critical areas across their business, such as asset performance, supply chain agility and stock control, allowing them to make fast decisions based on live data. This feeds innovation and unlocks the true potential of the data that exists within the business.

This type of intelligent manufacturing requires speed, agility, security, and the right culture. It’s perhaps the latter which often has the least focus and yet sits at the center of transformation. While automation and ML remove the painstaking amounts of time required for monotonous tasks, it’s still the creative and driven minds within the business that fuel the fire for innovation.

Becoming cloud native

It’s sensible, therefore, to remember that digital transformation isn’t solely an IT project; it requires a cultural shift within the business. And this is equally as important as adopting the technology itself. Why? Because IT leaders find themselves surrounded by experts that are skilled in using legacy IT systems, which, in their eyes, work. This creates a reluctance to change, and the very nature of humanity makes this a challenge. Manufacturers must onboard their people from the very start and instill a company-wide cultural shift to ensure everyone’s on the same team.

When it comes to the technical transformation, it’s time to take a cloud-native approach. This is what gives disruptors their competitive edge. They understand that to be an innovative disrupter you have to be able to deploy new innovations that are scalable, secure, reliable, and portable – at a rapid pace. Legacy systems can’t do this. They stunt innovation because they simply can’t keep up with the pace required and prevent manufacturers from becoming flexible adaptors.

This is why cloud is the future of manufacturing and why transitioning networks to the cloud should be at the top of every manufacturers’ priority list.

How Capgemini can help

Capgemini has the experience and expertise to support manufacturing organizations with cloud modernization – from basic connectivity to complex, autonomous systems. We’ve worked on over 5000 cloud projects, helping businesses take advantage of the cloud opportunity quickly and securely.

A core starting point sits within cloud strategy. Often, the pace of cloud adoption can be slowed by not defining the business case, omitting a clear plan for organizational transformation, or failing to accurately highlight risks. We prevent this through our cloud strategy provision where we develop a clear roadmap that aligns directly with your businesses’ objectives. By considering the overall vision, value case, culture-shift, and transformation, we are able to deliver a strong foundation for your cloud journey.

Our support remains throughout your transformation, from intent to reality. From assessing real workloads and migrating them to the cloud, right up to implementing software-as-a-service and providing our own Capgemini cloud platform. We’ll help you to increase business agility, improve performance, and rapidly adapt to the ever-evolving digital world. This, combined with technical innovation, will ensure you embrace intelligent manufacturing and have clear business advantage over your competition.

To find out more about how we can support your organization to embrace the cloud and power the future of intelligent manufacturing, contact our team today.

Rens Huizenga

Expert in Cloud Native, Cloud Services

I support customers to move their application landscape to the cloud. Based on the cloud strategy, the business case and assessment performed, a cloud transformation roadmap is drafted during the detailed assessment phase consisting of:
Apps Migration to Cloud : to create and execute an applications migration project that takes all perspectives into account —business, technical, financial, staffing, end-user, and service provider—so you can maximize the business value and minimize the costs, complexities, and disruptions.
Application Modernization Services: to design the right strategy for rehosting, redeploying, revising, refactoring, rebuilding, and/or replacing applications via the cloud to optimize the cost and efficiency of your entire application portfolio.
Cloud Native build: to rebuild applications from scratch on the cloud platform