Keep Up with Industry 4.0 Trends Using This AWS-based Cloud ERP Software Solution

This article is sponsored by Infor, a global provider of business cloud software products for companies in specific industries.

The concept of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or Industry 4.0, has been around for several years, yet many manufacturers still need to adopt the cloud storage capabilities and device connectivity required to transform. Implementing Internet of Things (IoT) devices, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), cloud computing, and the personnel trained to manage them all represent a significant financial investment.

It’s necessary to stay competitive in a growing, dynamic post-pandemic world, but the change doesn’t have to happen all at once.

“It’s not about spending three years aiming for the big result,” says Matthew Addley, senior director, product and industry market strategy, at Infor. “It’s about what we call an implementation accelerator driven delivery. You get the core ERP up and running as quickly as possible, then you have short sprints that leverage process optimization, AI, and machine learning use cases so that your factory gets smarter quicker.”

Business cloud software provider Infor develops enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions curated for companies in select industries, such as industrial manufacturing, distribution, food and beverage, healthcare, aerospace, and apparel. Their ever-growing capability, Infor CloudSuite™, is specifically designed to provide Smart Factory intelligence such as metrics on performance, where to cut waste, and how to streamline processes. Offering end-to-end visibility, Infor CloudSuite™ can improve companies’ supply chain resilience and sustainability reporting.

Get to Know Infor

• For the second year in a row, Gartner® named Infor a Leader in the 2022 Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Enterprises.
• Infor connects 65,000+ organizations, employs 17,000+ workers, and services customers in 175+ countries around the world.
• Infor’s CloudSuite™ services are built on secure Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure.

Thomas Insights (TI): Tell me about CloudSuite™ Industrial Enterprise and its impact on Smart Factory. How does it work, and what sets it apart from competing smart products in the market?

Matthew Addley (MA): The Infor CloudSuite™ platform impacts the Smart Factory because it is more than an ERP solution; it connects the workflow from engineering to the supply chain community without disrupting flow. It’s a combination of automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. It can be configured for various industries and factories of different sizes. For example, we can recommend a Smart Factory solution that only automates certain processes, depending on the customer’s needs.

The Smart Factory capability connects IoT sensing devices, machinery, and the entire operating context. It effectively opens the silos of information so that you can see how the different stages of production affect each other. This end-to-end visibility and data can help improve workflows, resolve problems before they get worse, and eliminate waste.

It’s also a composable platform, which means it’s equipped with the operational and administrative capabilities necessary for engineers to make quick changes as needed. If an engineer does make a change, it affects current production. Even changes in humidity can affect production. If there is a decline in product quality, the Smart Factory is able to gather data from sensing devices, identify the problem, and suggest solutions.

Within the Smart Factory context, Infor CloudSuite™ is constantly producing insights for engineers, production staff, and other stakeholders, all with the goal of improving quality.

TI: How does the Smart Factory increase visibility and reduce the logistics issues seen in the supply chain over the past two years?

MA: A Smart Factory connects all parts of the production process. You can even connect your supply chain provider to help you make recommendations based on lead times for different products or what products need to be expedited.

Our Nexus platform, which manages a trillion dollars’ worth of global operations at any time, gives customers better insights into when stock will arrive so that they can adjust production accordingly. Getting suppliers to input updates into the platform can help you meet production timelines and deliver on time.

With all your suppliers on the platform, you can develop your own vendor science, which uses your suppliers’ lead time history to help pinpoint areas of resilience or vulnerability. You can analyze vendor performance across multiple parameters to see if they all struggled over the same month or if it’s just one supplier struggling. From a sourcing perspective, understanding the exact scope of the supply chain issue can better prepare you to support or replace certain suppliers. 

TI: What trends are you seeing in your industry, and how does Infor CloudSuite™ driving the Smart Factory help your clients stay ahead of the curve?

MA: There are still huge labor shortages around the world, so embracing the Smart Factory is key to surfacing the relevant information to somebody so that they can take action on it. People are also tending not to go to work if they’re sick, so a Smart Factory will continue to cover any disruptions related to employee absences.

Customers are also more educated. They’re demanding more service. Companies have to be able to provide more traceability data, easier access to warranty information, and whatever else the customer requires. In return, companies can gather more information about the performance of their products in customers’ specific applications, and with the help of their Smart Factory, start improving the next version of the product.

This trend is also closely tied to sustainability. To create a more circular economy, companies want to produce products more efficiently and with a lower measurable carbon footprint. This is especially true in Europe, where a company’s green initiatives and ESG are non-negotiable parts of the contract. So the more that companies can use technology like Infor CloudSuite™ and the Smart Factory to prove their sustainability reporting, the better.

In high-growth countries like India and Mexico, where production is primarily thought of as manual labor, there are many opportunities to implement cobots. Working alongside human workers, cobots can automate tasks throughout the plant to improve efficiency and flexibility. Cobots are the beginning of automating the whole production line, and we see plenty of potential for the Smart Factory there.

Disruption is something we need to plan for rather than hope against. Composable ERPs like Infor CloudSuite™ improve supply chain resilience. Not only can we provide a framework for customers to run a formal SNAP (Significant New Alternatives Policy) process, but we can also use greater transparency to open up information silos and tackle problems as a whole, which benefits both manufacturers and their customers.

Infor’s solutions are poised to help customers stay ahead of all these trends, providing information to improve sustainability, reduce waste, enhance efficiency, and suggest where robotic automation is needed most.

TI: How does this approach to Smart Factory improve sustainability while also keeping up with production demand?

MA: The Smart Factory tracks throughput, energy consumption, bills of materials, and all other primary drivers of production. Connecting this information to the data sources tells users the footprint of the product they’re making given their operating scenarios.

The best way for every business to be sustainable is to reduce waste. Quality issues are the biggest contributors to waste because businesses have to throw things away. Hanging onto obsolete stock is another source of waste.

A Smart Factory helps us avoid these scenarios by surfacing the relevant information throughout the production process. Since more companies are now looking to reduce their ESG (environmental, social, and governance) footprint, we can build out sustainability dashboards for particular customers so that they can see their progress on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. It’s not just for compliance purposes, but also to capture their CO2 footprint and energy consumption.

Instead of one person trying to analyze five, 10, 15 different parameters and coming up with insights, Infor CloudSuite™’s machine learning capability does all this hard work at every stage of production. This frees up the employees to be as productive as possible, and depending on their roles within the organization, they can take certain insights and apply them as needed.

TI: Can you share a specific story of how Infor CloudSuite™ and the Smart Factory concept helped one of your customers?

MA: SEG Automotive is scaling into Smart Factory leveraging Infor OS to gain better insights into production line health, with overall equipment efficiency (OEE) diagnoses down from 24 hours to about 10 minutes.

An aftermarket example connected to the as-delivered product configuration is forklift manufacturer Combilift, using AI and machine learning recommendations to improve service parts quotations and subsequent first-time fixes.

A further example going beyond the shop floor is seating manufacturer Camatic using Infor CloudSuite™ and the Infor OS platform to run a better-informed supply chain through vendor science. Our technology provides them with early and peer-based AI/ML-driven analysis to identify next-level supplier performance and areas of improvement.

TI: What types of customers or applications is this capability marketed towards?

MA: All manufacturers and industrial businesses can use Infor CloudSuite™ to enhance their Smart Factory, and it can be scaled up or down depending on the company’s size. Depending on your vertical within the manufacturing industry, you might want to map sustainability but use slightly different factors or outputs based on your geographical location.

Infor’s solutions target manufacturing companies that want to be innovative but haven’t found the reason to yet. What we’re doing is minimizing that time to value and making the technology easy to adopt. We provide step-by-step guidance to help companies ease into their Industry 4.0 transformation in a way that makes the most sense to them.