Decoding the Path to SMART FACTORY and Opening the World of Solutions to Overcome Limitations and Create Business Value for Thai Manufacturers
Smart Factory or intelligent factory is a combination between defining the organization’s strategy, new technology and skillful staff to give rise to the capabilities in compatibility with the changing times and create sustainable and environmentally friendly business returns. Nowadays, we can clearly see a shift towards Smart Factory, especially, in leading industry group, such as, motor vehicle and relevant part manufacturing industry, food industry and the electronic equipment manufacturing industry, and others.
But not all entrepreneurs can develop a Smart Factory smoothly because most of them have been faced with many challenges in the beginning no matter what it is their concerns over a lack of a clear strategy or knowledge of where to begin with. LiB Consulting (Thailand), Co., Ltd., a leading management consulting company from Japan, as a company having experiences in both corporate strategy planning and the transformation of the manufacturing industry into Smart Factories, therefore conducted a study on the motivating factors to be provided to the entrepreneurs to get to understand on the basic nature of the Mega Trend which is inevitably coming to have an influence on every industry on this planet. There are 3 main factors as follows that they should get to understand:
Technological Factor: Consumers’ changing needs to the extent of giving rise to the on-demand economic system requiring to immediately be responded to because consumers around the world can order products and services 24 hours a day, have thus far become a challenge for every industry to devise new strategies to keep up with the customers’ changing behavior.
Political and Environmental Factors: Political policies on the aspect of the environment, particularly, the green economy policy and the Net Zero Emissions goal have become yet another one of the urgent agendas consequently resulting in the entrepreneurs to have to adapt themselves to show their responsibilities to the world through the ways in reducing energy usage, the usage of technology in the step of the production, warehousing and transportation processes as well as choosing clean energy, etc.
Social Factor: It is considered yet another factor difficult to control, such as, the government announcement on the minimum wage increase to improve workers’ quality of life but on the other side of the coin, it has caused the entrepreneurs to shoulder the burden of the increasing costs and become a driving force for the development of Smart Factory in order to maintain the business balance while breaking limits all along together in terms of both the efficiency and effectiveness in the supply chain.
Smart Factory Main Goal Awareness.
LiB Consulting (Thailand) Co., Ltd., has analyzed and presented goals to enable organizations to make a strong and concrete transformation to a Smart Factory. It is necessary to be aware of the development goals in all 4 areas as follows:
Operational Efficiency: through the integration of knowledge in both the company’s Best Practices and technology, especially, under the context of the Supply Chain in order to improve work processes throughout the production chain.
Quality Enhancement: to control the product quality to consistently meet the standards and create maximum satisfactions to customers by using various indicators, including Zero Defect, Defect per Unit or the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) through the installation of sensors for welding to connect with the machine information status and send feedback on abnormalities to relevant people in real time as well as the ability to automatically stop the production line immediately when a serious problem has been detected, etc.
Cost Optimization: If the business variables should have been changed, the operations would inevitably be affected no matter what it is a change in the demands, raw material price fluctuations or even the production capacities, the advanced technology would help the organizations to create data products that could be used for analysis to reduce costs to be in line with the changing situations.
Market Responsiveness: Adjusting products and services to meet the needs of customer groups will definitely allow new products or services to expeditiously penetrate the market, consumers to be more aware of brands and entrepreneurs to be able to receive their investment paybacks in a short period of time. For these reasons, many organizations have adopted the tools like the Product Lifecycle Management for use in the Product Design and Research Department including the Supply Chain Management tools to improve product designs in a seamless relationship with the Production Department.
Moving Forward Towards Developing Smart Factory that Meets Business Needs.
Smart Factory development is something about an application of necessary technology to be compatible with the industrial context where the process of which can be divided into 3 main steps as follows: Setting up a Strategy, Arranging for a Sequence), and Determining on Work Structure.
The transformation to Smart Factory is considered an urgent matter for the business sector in order to be able to compete in the manufacturing industry on a par with other countries. Such an important transition is indeed essential to have advisors with expertise to provide support to entrepreneurs to be able to start and proceed correctly in every step systematically.
