From product and asset conception to full production, digital technologies are transforming the manufacturing business. New customer expectations, such as mass customization and product-as-a-service, further accentuate the need to embrace digitization across the manufacturing value-chain. Smart, connected products, assets and operations offer the potential for time to market reduction, productivity gains, cost savings, new revenue streams and new business models. However, digital transformation demands new thinking, skills and ways of working as the Internet of Things (IoT), operations and information technology converge.
“Too many manufacturers are thinking of ‘digital’ in terms of either the factory floor or customer not both. Only by looking at digitizing and connecting both the customer and smart operations can manufacturers truly realize the optimization and disruptive capabilities of digital to drive growth,” comments Jean-Pierre Petit, Global Head of Digital Manufacturing, Capgemini Group. "Capgemini’s capacity to connect the physical and virtual worlds is unique in the market. Our ability to not only connect physical assets to business systems while also leveraging customer insights as an integral part of digital transformation initiatives, has proven its value to manufacturing clients across the world, in their quest to successfully transform their businesses for the digital age.”
Capgemini’s Digital Manufacturing Services help clients improve their digital maturity across smart product and services development, product and asset lifecycle management, industrial cybersecurity, on-site and remote operations management, Industrial IoT and Big Data, and complex system simulation. Through its Digital Manufacturing Services offer Capgemini enables companies within manufacturing industries such as Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Chemicals, Consumer Products, Energy and Utilities, High Tech, Industrial Products, Life Sciences and Resources to embrace digital transformation. Examples include:
Faurecia – Capgemini is supporting an organization wide digital transformation initiative for Faurecia, a leading automotive parts manufacturer. Reviewing all opportunities presented by new digital solutions in particular in operations, supply chain, product life cycle management, collaborative working practices and customer relationship management. An exploration phase identified the major technological drivers for performance, 40 proofs of concept were tested across three months to steer the development of a three year large scale digital transformation program that ranges from the use of manufacturing intelligence on the factory floor to the integration of IoT into warehouses.
Valeo – Since 2015, Capgemini has been working with Valeo to design a connected mobility solution for commercial fleets and car rental companies. This new solution uses Valeo’s InBlue virtual key technology with the digitized vehicle key which can be shared via smartphone. The solution offers a fully digitized process: reservation, payment, vehicle geolocation, vehicle checks, late return notification or incident notification, and service evaluation.
Siemens Building Technologies is working with Capgemini to further develop its Internet of Things cloud based services platform, Navigator, for building and real estate automation. It is now providing additional analytics capabilities for digital services to real estate customers, to harness the data generated by buildings for predictive and preventative maintenance, sustainability and energy management.
Digital transformation is now crucial for manufacturers
Evidence of the transformative potential of digital and the urgency among manufacturers for digital transformation comes from a recent Capgemini Consulting study into operations analytics adoption by manufacturers. More than 70 percent of respondents now put more emphasis on operations analytics initiatives than on customer-focused processes. However, only 18 percent had extensively integrated their analytics initiatives across business operations and successfully realized their objectives. Capgemini’s Digital Manufacturing Services cover the secure creation and management of:
· Smart Connected products: enable companies to achieve digitalized product development, change management and expanded collaboration based on a unique 3D model of products and plants. Capgemini facilitates smooth simulation of complex systems thereby avoiding the need for physical prototypes and testing helping to develop product usage based innovation to fuel growth.
· Smart Connected Plants: that are digitally managed, monitored and operated in real-time. Capgemini helps organizations transform to increase enterprise performance with digital technologies that support seamless and real-time solutions, and accelerate from plant conception to full production and reduce time-to-market. With platforms as a service, Capgemini helps drive efficiency and asset integrity while simulating manufacturing flows and processes. Efficiencies are also optimized through preventative and predictive maintenance and product quality. Furthermore, Capgemini helps organizations to enable and manage the operators in a safe environment complying with industry regulations to become truly digitally integrated, while securing the assets and production with industrial cybersecurity services.
· New Business Models: enable and support the transformation and evolution of global manufacturers to digital providers while addressing dynamic customer expectations, by adapting models such as mass customization, product as a service or taking care on customer of customer needs. Capgemini helps organizations to embrace digital manufacturing platforms and services to gain sustainable competitive advantage from their investments into digital capabilities.
