ndustrial manufacturers are facing the biggest challenge to date: profitable sustainability. Not only do you need to reduce emissions in your own operations and supply chains – but you also need to provide products and services that help your customers do the same.
Adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies, such as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), AI, intelligent automation, and edge computing, continues to grow. Not only do these technologies power smart, highly efficient machinery and factories, they provide the visibility and transparency needed to reduce emissions and comply with new regulations.
Increasingly, industrial manufacturers are adopting service-based business models and retaining more responsibility for their equipment, improving sustainability in two ways. First, when experts service their own machinery, they can ensure it runs at peak efficiency, and second, they are motivated to make better products that last longer and are easier to recycle.
In a recent survey, nearly half of industrial manufacturers said product and service innovation was central to sustainability. Large generator and engine manufacturers, for example, are working to design engines that can use hydrogen-based fuel to meet demand for greener products. Often, these products are bundled with services to further reduce downstream emissions.
Circular supply chains – where manufacturers reuse, refurbish, remanufacture, and recycle parts and products – are key to a more sustainable future. They can be profitable too. Using the right technologies, manufacturers can simulate revenue across multiple customer lifecycles and forecast the future value of valuable materials, like aluminum and gold.
Choose your SAP software for manufacturing companies
Making strategic decisions based on sustainability-related data helps you reduce your environmental footprint. You can establish a unified approach to sustainability risk assessment and manage operational risk and compliance by using standardized, workflow-enabled processes to record incidents and trigger investigations.
Enabling digital twins and IoT connectivity of assets allows you to continuously monitor asset health, process quality, through-put, workers safety, waste, and emissions. By combining asset information with predictive analytics, you can predict the likelihood of asset failures, plan maintenance, and adjust production plans accordingly.
Getting deep market insights enables proactive development of innovative products that exceed customer expectations. You can increase your margins by offering value-added services to improve customer loyalty and satisfaction.
Achieving real-time data visibility through interdependent SAP Digital Supply Chain solutions helps transform supply chain planning and execution. You can establish automated and standardized planning processes, collaborate through business networks, and react faster to ever-changing downstream demand and supply disruptions to remain resilient.