Every day, we interact with smartphones and smart home systems that can respond to our speech and touch thanks to intelligent software. Factories should work in a similar way in the future. However, a direct comparison with the capabilities of intelligent everyday devices makes it clear: The factory has so far looked old in the truest sense of the word. Comparatively little change has taken place in production facilities over the last 30 years: Modernization processes are gradually taking place, but hundreds of people continue to work there, performing one and the same task repeatedly. In stark contrast to the consumer market, the digital revolution has yet to take place in manufacturing.

Production today is extremely inflexible. Even if the opposite is often claimed: Factories are not yet geared towards reacting quickly to changes, adapting promptly to rotating production requirements and customer needs or any quality problems that arise. However, it is precisely these factors that are decisive for competitiveness. Until now, machines have been configured, calibrated and managed manually. As a result, this first generation of automation is too expensive, takes too long and - a very important point - is largely based on the expertise of a limited group, which makes scaling or repeatability difficult.

Even advanced technologies such as robots and 3D printers that operate in such companies constantly repeat the same activities with very little flexibility. This results in machines standing idle while waiting for orders, material or human interaction. Quality issues lead to large amounts of waste, and reports show that employee turnover is as high as 30 percent due to high labor intensity.

Advantages of intelligent automation

These hurdles should have been overcome long ago in the 21st century. We need to usher in a new era and redefine the concept of the factory: Production facilities must become increasingly intelligently networked internally in order to be able to operate autonomously in the long term.

The first concrete starting point is the factory-internal networking of production to create a smart, autonomous platform. This involves merging individual machines into an AI-controlled software level that configures, monitors and manages machines and systems. This so-called "software-defined manufacturing" combines intelligent software, cloud-based architectures, AI and machine learning, vision and robotics technology. The programmable factory is therefore based on a fusion of simulation and engineering with modular robot cells.

Software-controlled production automatically detects quality defects, for example, or can optimize material and resource planning for individual machines. The intelligent, software-defined superstructure thus triggers a series of scalable optimizations. This means that performance increases, while freed-up capacities can be immediately redistributed and utilized as required.

The higher the degree of autonomy, the more flexible production is and the more opportunities and benefits arise. This is because holistic automation based on this model does not stop at the factory gates, but has a wider impact on the sales market. The result of automated production processes can be seen, for example, in the ability to meet the growing consumer demand for locally produced products and to adapt products more individually to customer needs while still bringing them to market more quickly.

Software takes production to a new level

The manufacturing industry will change over the next few years. The next generation of automation will fully exploit the potential of factories by overcoming automation hurdles with software. Software-defined manufacturing as a core concept will make factories more flexible and agile, and therefore more adaptable to needs. A software-defined approach to manufacturing automation is based on three pillars:

• Configuration, repeatability and scaling of automation are equalized. This has a positive effect on the efficiency, speed and flexibility of the entire production process.
• The manufacturing process itself becomes intelligent. Thanks to AI-based software, smaller, more sustainable factories, for example, can manufacture better products and increase overall performance at the same time. The current image of the factory floor is therefore outdated.
• The new software-defined manufacturing processes are transparent and accessible, making it much easier to initiate and adapt the actual production processes. This is because it is currently difficult for an engineer or designer to gain an overview of the complete manufacturing process of a product. It is only thanks to the highly developed software that production can be traced in all its individual steps.

A "democratization" of innovation

Thanks to the new transparency gained in this way, AI-based software is transforming production. Actual production becomes tangible from start to finish. Every single step can be easily tracked - from the search for a production site to product development, manufacturing and scaling to the right production volumes, as well as adjusting revenue and throughput to meet demand.

This opens up new potential. On the one hand, controlling the entire process becomes less complicated, while on the other, the opportunities for market entry also change. When companies automate their production using software, they set an entire chain in motion: production becomes more transparent, simpler and more cost-effective, which results in a large number of new products in an accelerated form.

Ultimately, this will lead to a "democratization of innovation", which will be the true advantage of software-defined manufacturing. With its novel approach, Bright Machines provides the impetus for companies to rethink their current automation strategies. On the road to the smart factory, software-defined manufacturing is the next big evolutionary step.

Amar Hanspal, CEO of Bright Machines / ag