Readying for the Future of Manufacturing

Consumer goods manufacturing has been transformed by scalable technologies that automate processes and minimize manual efforts. For companies that have not yet established some of these tools and strategies, how can they communicate the value of tech investments, and what might their future of manufacturing look like?In this chat, Stephen Hooper, VP of design and manufacturing cloud solutions at Autodesk, delves into some of the misconceptions of Industry 4.0, as well as the opportunities that consumer goods leaders should embrace related to the future of manufacturing. Hooper has been with Autodesk for about 20 years, currently overseeing all of the tools and technologies built to help engineers, production engineers, designers, and analysts come up with conceptual ideas, simulate their behavioral characteristics, and then put them into production.To set the stage for the conversation, he talked about the growing complexity of consumer products and heavy amount of dependence on systems modeling. Most consumer products these days have some level of software integration, according to Hooper, and people want to be able to connect to their consumer products past the point of sale to deliver aftermarket services or over-the-air updates that continue to deliver some form of subscriber benefit.Staying ahead of the competition has led to a pressure that many manufacturers are feeling, particularly with the advent of generative AI and the scale and velocity at which it’s being developed. The fear is that if competitors employ these technologies faster, or are in a better position from an infrastructural point of view to take advantage of them, people could get put out of business.However, it’s not about replacing skillsets, but instead complementing them with AI. It means coordinating and adopting these technologies and integrating that tech with the suppliers and customers a company works with. This is especially important within the design process, as companies are being forced to pivot their strategies more quickly than ever. In design, there’s a pressure to innovate faster, and come up with more in a smaller period of time. Technology can be used here to accelerate design exploration — an area of generative AI that’s been very misunderstood and seen as a threat, he says. These generative technologies are really the only possible route to solving the existing skills gap in manufacturing, Hooper suggests. It’s simply a matter of learning how to harness these tools to become even more creative and maintain a competitive advantage. Pivoting to other technologies within the industry and the supply chain of the future, Hooper emphasized that what people term “Industry 4.0” is somewhat outdated and misunderstood. Some aspects of it are simply related to connectivity and it’s not usually mixed with AI.In artificial intelligence, specifically, there are many ways to use it as a starting point to create efficiencies. For example, Hooper points to automating the creation of documentation using AI — a process that takes many engineers up to 21 hours per week. It’s a great opportunity to transform this task as it’s not a great use of anyone’s time, he said.As for advice for companies looking to develop modern manufacturing, Hooper suggests communicating the value of these technologies in simple terms and demonstrating the benefits. Explain how it can make a specific job more interesting, more productive, and how it can help the industry forward, he says.

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