Smart Technologies can help Manufacturing Businesses Thrive in a Post COVID-19 Reality
The Atlantic Chamber of Commerce is working to raise awareness among Atlantic Canadian business owners of the immense potential of implementing smart technological solutions.
This is even more important now as companies struggle with shutdowns and decreases in production and sales, and what will surely be a realignment of global markets.
COVID-19 is reshaping the way that companies are now required to do business. From changing the number of people at any given time working in a facility, to ensuring any employees who are not feeling well stay home and implementing cleaning and disinfecting procedures.
These measures come at a cost to productivity and overall margins, which will impact business owners now and for the foreseeable future. This means we need to learn to live and operate within this new reality.
Atlantic Canadian manufacturers as a whole are generally behind other provinces in adopting innovative solutions. Companies around the world are benefitting from smart-technologies and processes, but Atlantic Canada has been slow to embrace this important transition.
This reality along with the new demands of a post COVID-19 world will seriously impact the productivity, profitability and competitiveness of our Atlantic Canadian manufactures. However, this does not have to be a negative. Instead, we could embrace this as the ideal time for businesses to re-tool and upgrade to advanced manufacturing facilities.
Advanced Manufacturing and Industry 4.0 refer to the growing use of smart technologies to help businesses improve their productivity. This does not have to be costly or complicated and manufacturers can greatly benefit from even the smallest of changes.
Humans may be required to physically distance for the foreseeable future, but machines are not. We are not suggesting that all companies purchase robots or look to implement expensive automated processes. In fact, there are many off-the-shelf products and software solutions that can help manufactures become more productive and do not require huge investments.
Connected devices are one measure that factories can implement to increase productivity. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is all about connected devices talking to each other and sharing information without human-to-human contact.
Predictive maintenance is another concept that factories can implement to bolster productivity. It relies on the use of sensors to ensure that maintenance is conducted only on those machines that need it, and only when they need it as opposed to doing regular scheduled checks of them all. Predictive maintenance can decrease downtime on machines and ensure there is no lost productivity.
These are just a few measures to increase productivity. The timing has never been more important for manufacturing companies to implement smart processes to boost their competitiveness, reduce operating costs and improve the quality of their products and services.
Sheri Somerville is the CEO of the Atlantic Chamber of Commerce, a nationally accredited organization representing the network of 94 chambers, 27 corporate partners, and more than 16,000 businesses in Atlantic Canada.