Smart manufacturing could be key to ramping up production in defence industry

24 September 2024 Consultancy.uk

The last two years have seen successive major wars break out in Europe and the Middle East. With the violence spreading into wider regional Lee Timmins, a consulting director at Project One, explains how defence manufacturers are using technology to scale production.

“Many of our defence customers are ramping up production to meet the needs of UK armed forces and our international partners,” Timmins explained on Project One’s company website.

Contending that “the increase in activity will be with us for some time”, he noted that the consultancy has seen “significant investment in new production lines and infrastructure”. But amid heightened global inflation, and supply chain disruptions – partially related to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza – this is easier said than done.

“We also see that often, investment in additional capacity is not enough,” Timmins continued. “Manufacturing must make a step change in overall effectiveness. Production losses must be driven down.

According to Timmins, defence manufacturers are scaling up to meet today’s “global security challenges”, and in many cases, they are finding accelerated deployment of Industry 4.0 solutions can “make a big contribution, if done in the right way.”

A smart factory is a cyber-physical system that uses advanced technologies to analyze data, drive automated processes – and refine processes as they go. Smart factory solutions – or Industry 4.0 – can make a massive contribution to systematically reducing production losses, he contended.

Timmins went on, “Smart factory is not new. Many defence organisations have run pilot projects, but few have successfully taken advantage of harnessing industrial data at scale. At Project One, we are helping customers to do this, overcoming the barriers to “smart factories at scale.”

As noted in Timmins’ article, this has seen the firm support clients in a number of ways. These include finding use cases that will have maximum impact on reducing production losses; connecting OT and IT networks while preserving information security; determining which connections are valuable and putting in place robust and repeatable connectivity; choosing the right vendors to power these needs; and building internal capability to make sure an organisation’s staff have the necessary skills to make the most of smart manufacturing.

“We are helping customers to design and scale-up solutions in some of the most challenging defence manufacturing environments,” Timmins added.

Due to the potential gains touted for smart factories, considerable investment has already poured into such initiatives. Plex Systems research found that across the manufacturing sector, smart manufacturing adoption grew by 50% in 2021, while 83% of industry leaders identified smart manufacturing as key to their future success. But this rapid adoption comes with risks. Another recent survey by Capgemini found that smart factories are growing targets for cyberattacks. And despite half of smart factory operators expecting more cyber-attacks, many are still proving slow to ramp up cybersecurity.

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