How digital unlocks resilient, agile operations

Across the world, ensuring your operations and your thinking are agile and quick to respond to change is no longer a competitive advantage. It’s key to continued success for business, policymakers, and communities.

As global leaders in industrial automation software, our goal at Schneider Electric and AVEVA is to continually sharpen our vision for how we can empower industries to plan for what’s next, walking with you every step along the path to a sustainable future.

Digital solutions have a huge role to play in enabling Industry 4.0 and driving sustainable practices. As manufacturers rapidly accelerated their adoption of digital operating models, they have been able to safeguard employee health, ensure commercial resilience and elevate performance using digital intelligence. This is the new opportunity for industries and AVEVA’s portfolio combines the operational data management of PI System with industrial analytics, enabling us to lead the way. By harnessing the power of information with artificial intelligence and human insight, AVEVA is leading the industry with Performance Intelligence.

Schneider Electric’s network of Smart Factories was among the world’s first to transform operations, pioneering AVEVA’s Discrete Lean Management software and pivoting to cloud-based operating models to safeguard production. These changes transformed how we operate, cutting downtime by 44% and driving 21% increases in energy efficiency in key factories. The World Economic Forum recognized three Smart Factories as Advanced Manufacturing Lighthouses as a result. This digital-first approach extends beyond manufacturing. Across research and development, distribution centers and offices, digital solutions enable teams to work safely and securely, wherever they are located.

Now, we are harnessing our Cloud, IIoT, digital twin, and artificial intelligence capabilities to enable our customers to unify their data, visualize their business from bold new angles, and combine information and analytics with their team’s insight to elevate what they can achieve.

As we innovate, some new digital imperatives have emerged:

• Use interactive software tools to empower connected workers – Connectivity between field assets and people has enabled us to form virtual teams in order to better test, troubleshoot, diagnose, analyze and predict the behavior of our industrial machines in the field. As a result, fewer people are required onsite, and equipment fixes are performed before any unanticipated downtime occurs. Starbucks, the world’s largest coffeehouse chain, operates more than 30,000 stores in over 80 countries. AVEVA provides the group’s manufacturing automation platform which delivers superior edge-to-enterprise connectivity and visibility into operations around the world, driving operational agility and enabling the sharing of best practices.
• Improve operational effectiveness through unified data and analytics – As supply chains flex, digital analytics combined with operational data can give teams the insight they need to quickly adapt to unforeseen change, powered with artificial intelligence that can recommend operational alternatives. The past year has shown how tasks which we previously thought could only be successfully implemented in person can actually be performed and achieved digitally. This is opening up new opportunities for companies the world over. Danone is using AVEVA’s manufacturing execution software to enable their teams to share best practices and optimize performance, ensuring quality and safety of specialist nutrition manufacturing.
• Reduce onsite testing through the use of digital twins – Digital twin software simulation tools provide virtual models for both the engineering/design and operations phases of a project. A digital twin’s power is that it allows engineers to observe the physical asset’s behavior before actually spending money to build it and enables work on the model from remote locations. This minimizes the time staff needs to spend onsite thanks to rapid new asset implementations.
• Harness the cloud to drive opportunity – Many plants across the globe attribute 15% of their unanticipated downtime to power outages. New cloud-based software offerings now allow remotely connected customers to monitor exactly what’s happening in their power network and, with the help of online experts, identify potential power anomalies that could lead to failures. As a result, teams can operate more sustainably and drive efficiency. Henkel, a global leader in Consumer Goods and Industrial Chemicals uses our solutions to drive its “climate positive” goals across its value chain. The Laundry & Home Care team deployed a digital backbone to capture a “single source of truth” to help manage its sustainability and OEE performance. This has enabled them to cut costs by €8 million per annum and drive efficiency improvements by 16% year-on-year.

To learn about the Industries of the Future, visit www.se.com/iof and join us at Hannover Messe April 12th-16th.

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