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Collaboration for Robust Manufacturing

Willson Deng, Co-Founder & CEO, Arcstone

Willson Deng, Co-Founder & CEO, Arcstone

When we look back at the first and second industrial revolution, we see an age that genuinely defined where we are now. Technology emerged as a quick fix to remove redundancy in manual tasks and accelerate the production process. However, today, as the manufacturing sector transitions to Industry 4.0, collaboration has become a significant factor. Collaborative partnerships enable organizations to remain at the forefront of their industry while providing them with benefits that range from expanding networks and insights to accessing new talent pools, techniques, and processes as well as expanding their global reach. Several multifarious organizations are now coming forward to invest in research and development (R&D) to find new ways to integrate internally as well as externally.

Collaboration: The Key to Expansion
Manufacturing companies, today, are increasingly vouching for an ecosystem that allows the flow of ideas and unified pooling of resources. Hence, more joint ventures are taking place with the government providing the resources and funding needed to conduct significant researches. Several market leaders are looking to collaborate with startups that are more open to novel ideas and flexible in their approach toward manufacturing. These startups focus on creating new technologies that can enhance the capabilities of existing organizations by leaps and bounds.

The Advanced Remanufacturing and Technology Center (ARTC)—a contemporary platform built on public-private partnership—for example, helps industries translate research to industry applications. Led by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research is a statutory board under the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Singapore (A*STAR), in partnership with the Nanyang Technological University, ARTC is a collaborative platform that brings together industry players, public sector research institutes, and academia to bridge technological gaps in the adoption of advanced manufacturing and remanufacturing processes. Through this unique collaborative model, like-minded companies can come together to provide the real industry requirements, catalyst new opportunities, leverage on shared resources, and accelerate the development of remanufacturing capabilities in a faster, better, and cost-effective manner. The result of the research is shared among the other members who can derive solutions for their challenges as well. Specifically, in Singapore’s context, ARTC has driven growth across many accomplished companies and is still spearheading with great rigor.

Gateway to Digital Transformation
One of the biggest requirements for thriving in a digital world is to get rid of the manual paperwork and embrace technology completely. Many companies are extremely reluctant to go ahead with this step because they decipher it to be an expensive and time-consuming process. However, that is not the case. Digital solutions make managing processes simple when they are deployed correctly. For example, applications such as Google Sheets and Microsoft Office 365 come with various useful features like live-updating mechanisms and unlimited storage that can help an enterprise organize their business process very efficaciously.

Automation as the Foundation
It is of utmost importance for manufacturing companies to deploy innovative technologies to get access to real-time data, induce automation, and make better decisions. With the right technology, one can predict risks and prevent failure, which is a significant driving factor for companies striving in today’s competitive market. Moreover, CIOs need to make use of data-derived insights to make informed decisions to help organizations work through critical market situations or crises. A CIO should also encourage a similar approach among the employees as well to direct the organization in a unified direction successfully.

Check out: The Manufacturing Outlook