INTELLIGENT MANUFACTURING BLOG

​The pandemic-related product shortages - from computer chips to construction materials - were supposed to be resolved by now. But they’re not. Instead, the world has gained a lesson in the ripple effects of disruption. As a result, companies are looking for ways to strengthen their supply chains.     COVID-19 has tested supply chains like never...

Imagine driving a car where the dashboard reports yesterday’s speed and distance covered. It sounds odd but this is how many are operating their factories. They know the previous day’s output and OEE numbers but that is of little help in maximizing today’s performance. What they need are manufacturing dashboards that display real-time, actionable...

COVID-19 made working from home and digital collaboration new norms in enterprises. But, in factories and processing plants, remote working is not as easy to arrange. Because of the pandemic's lengthened impact, you must hurry up to enable your organization and facilities with new, flexible ways of working to keep your production with a simple,...

As a manufacturer, you probably know what to expect from the future. You will have to produce more customized products and run smaller lot sizes while increasing production velocity and reducing costs. Ultimately, this will test how efficiently you can manage the material flow. Are you ready? Many manufacturers are not because of one simple...

If you have a hard time getting accurate information about how your business is operating and performing, you’re not alone. In fact, most manufacturers we talk to say that the inability to share or access data prevents them from gaining the visibility and control they need. The problem stems from valuable data that’s locked inside multiple,...

Pharmaceutical companies typically use periodically collected samples and traditional statistical methods for Continued Process Verification (CPV) – partly due to limited computing power. As a result, you get old information and low accuracy as well as a nonscalable approach for massive data volumes. Today, however, computing power is no longer...

The smart factory trends 2020 are similar to what we’ve seen increasing over the last few years. The difference isn’t so much in the technology, it’s in the number of companies beginning to use it. Technologists have been talking about the huge IoT benefit for manufacturing, literally, for years. However, the manufacturers have been slow in...

Picture yourself driving late at night on a lonely country road. The road ahead is pitch-black, there are no street lights, and you are driving without headlights. You have no idea what’s coming up on the road ahead. There could be one or more deer standing in the middle of the road. There might be a massive pothole right where your wheels will...

Manufacturing battery cells for electric cars is challenging. That's because production yield is typically low, the final quality validation requires a long test period, and the overall process is costly. This article explains how predictive quality analytics increased production yield by 16% for battery cells. Elisa Smart Factory team conducted...

Continuous manufacturing enables pharmaceutical companies to improve product quality, reduce medicine shortages, and increase efficiency. But, the transition from batch processing is difficult. For this purpose, this case study explains how a global pharmaceutical company started its transition process from batch-based processes to continuous...