Key Technology Trends for 2022 – ARC Advisory Group
This year’s “Key Technology Trends” report was again strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been a year where markets did not typically suffer from demand problems but were often impacted by supply problems. This drastically shifted the need for industrial companies to respond instantly to any source chain issues and become more agile and flexible, sometimes needing to redesign their products and manufacturing work processes in real-time. The result of this will create demand for technologies that ARC feels will grow more mainstream in 2022 and beyond, helping industrial companies increase their business and operational resilience as well as their sustainability.
Digital transformation is expediting the ability for physical and organizational boundaries to be broken to engage a real-time workforce, connect teams, plus drive collaboration. This will be driving demand for key technologies in order to better monitor, control, and protect against failures, ensure product fulfillment and high productivity, protect and upskill personnel, plus do all this while leveraging enhanced cybersecurity architectures. To meet these imperatives, industrial businesses must continue to accelerate their own digital transformation and deploy these important technologies, leveraging a common digital thread from engineering to operations that enables these key technologies to improve agility, reliability, and efficiency.
In last year’s Key Technology Styles report, we focused on trends that include technology convergence morphing into technologies fusion; operational resilience becoming a key objective; remote operations getting the new normal; automated operations becoming autonomous procedures, and edge computing platforms becoming advantage automation systems; all of which are poised to either enter the mainstream or – if already there – to continue to gain acceptance. All relate to the overall digital transformation of industry, infrastructure, and today’s increasingly smart cities and municipalities. For this year, in no order, here are some of the particular key technologies that ARCH Advisory Group believes will increase in importance over the next twelve months or so. While far from a complete list, typically the technologies discussed in this report will almost certainly make an impact on industry, infrastructure, and cities in 2022, building upon the demands created for companies in order to thrive in a world where this only certainty is uncertainty.
Meta-Machine Interface, the Convergence of HMI with AR/VR
To leverage data gained through digital transformation, industrial companies must address often the methods they use to deliver and consume information. The HMI visualization hardware plus software used in many industrial applications are well suited for numerous tasks. However, within a connected digital enterprise, additional creation tools will certainly be needed to accommodate your special requirements of all roles, especially the remote worker. Augmented reality (AR), which is often used for maintenance applications today; and virtual reality (VR), which is often used for training and simulation applications today, offer unique capabilities that can address many of these requirements with regard to engineers, operators, and technicians.
To realize the full potential of visualization to be able to support electronic transformation inside industry in the future, AR in addition to VR should begin to be integrated with HMI Software and become part of the exact Meta-visualization experience. When packaged with IIoT and analytics, Meta-visualization tools will offer the potential to provide users along with immersive experiences, real-time contextualized data, and even role-related information to help users execute their daily tasks quickly, accurately, together with effectively. Within the connected digital business, Meta-visualization can enhance the particular user encounter, support innovation, and transform the customer interaction model for you to help improve the way companies design, manufacture, operate, maintain, and service their products and assets. The future success of such Meta-visualization programs will rely on integration with other enterprise software, such as product lifecycle management (PLM), manufacturing execution systems (MES), and additionally field support management (FSM). Any Meta-visualization initiative must function horizontally across these and other business groups to help provide not to mention manage tailored applications for the roles within them.
In 2022, look regarding the introduction of innovative solutions where these visual images technologies may start to move into a single offering, beginning together with HMI Software program and AR on fixed, mobile, and also wearable hardware.
Real-Time Smart Supply Chain Solutions
Manufacturers and their supply chain managers face further risk and operational disruption as they strive to minimize their own reliance on global partners. Thanks in order to many commercial company’s inabilities to deliver items in high demand, it is becoming increasingly critical that digital change becomes a top priority for supply chains as well as manufacturing operations in order for a business to become competitive as well as operationally resilient. The outbreak further exposed global supply chain weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Industrial companies are realizing that traditional supply chain solutions are inadequate to be able to compete today, and there is a real need to shift for you to more adaptable, agile, and intelligent provide chain instruments that are usually fully digitally enabled.
This trend has been a major factor in typically the rising demand for real-time smart source chain solutions that are not only connected to raw material and component manufacturers, but also are part of the digital thread that connects to PLM and electronic digital twins so industrial businesses can make product design and manufacturing workflow changes if alternative material plus components usually are sourced. These real-time smart supply string solutions are also based on predictive stats that may also allow for on-demand manufacturing in addition to tighter collaboration with source chain companions.
In 2022 and even beyond, look for the deployment of current smart offer chain options as this is becoming more crucial than ever that these types of technologies are in place to optimize efficiency and visibility and meet the requirements associated with manufacturing, logistics, and warehousing that will be required to remain globally competitive.
AIoT Solutions, The Concurrence of Artificial Intelligence together with IIoT
Industrial companies are looking for better ways to help connect their particular workforce to decision tools and electronically enhance or even augment work and company processes. These types of companies are looking to make better use of business data already collected and additionally help persons make much better decisions that will improve enterprise performance. ARC sees this particular dynamic across all aspects of manufacturing, from style engineering in order to operations not to mention maintenance to supply chain and also human resources. The foundation regarding the Commercial Internet involving Things (IIoT) is this ability to collect massive quantities of data at high frequency as well as make these kinds of integrated datasets mobile and accessible throughout the organization for strategic decision-making. However , industrial production has not really typically built organizational competency in information science, which incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). While engineering roles are usually skilled found in analyzing large amounts connected with data, setting up and creating production-grade AI and ML environments is not easily accomplished.
The particular confluence with AI plus Industrial IoT technological forces gives rise to a new a digital solution category, the Synthetic Intelligence for Things (AIoT), that centers on unlocking the untapped business value in professional data. This category describes the combination of AJE technologies with the Industrial IoT to enable the next generation of Industrial AJAI infrastructure, allowing organizations to be able to enable seamless human-machine workflows, harmonize manufacturing data administration, and rapidly transform raw data into tangible organization outcomes. AIoT brings intelligence from often the edge for you to the cloud in industrial environments, transforming the info into useful information intended for an improved decision-making process, with processing done inside of a location exactly where it is most needed. AIoT is the democratization of AJAJAI and MILLILITERS in the commercial domain by converging files science using IT providing software at scale in addition to OT domain expertise.
In 2022, search for the growth of fit-for-purpose, cloud-ready AIoT solutions that provide the integrated data supervision, edge and even cloud facilities, and production-grade AI environment to build, deploy together with host business AI applications at organization speed and additionally scale.
Wise Safety Options That Increase Productivity not to mention Resilience
Digital transformation requires industrial firms to obtain much more production and device information, which means that more professional components need to have the ability to collect production procedures or equipment data, procedure that records into meaningful information, and also send of which information to the edge, to a control system, to some sort of cloud, or perhaps some mixture of those options. This has led to help the development of smart solutions the fact that have all these built-in capabilities to assist production lines and machines to become more productive as well as information-enabled to increase manufacturing efficiencies and decrease unscheduled downtime. At the same time, safety continues to increase its importance, helping to protect workers from injuries or potentially life-threatening situations.
Integrating safety in order to leverage the full capabilities and benefits about smart devices, like gathering and digesting data at real-time in or close to point that your data is usually gathered, but still able to leverage almost all safety functionality, represents a good convergence of the two systems. This is leading to the exact deployment in a number of new smart safety solutions, which are now also an essential component from an manufacturing company’s functional resilience strategy. Smart security devices provide great benefits to individuals who install, program, operate, and services the automation equipment, while well as the production assets themselves. So, this specific not only makes these kind of assets safer to run, but also provides valuable insight like to what is occurring, since the smart devices are designed to gather key data that can be analyzed plus leveraged to make the overall creation process more secure, more efficient, productive, in addition to profitable.
Inside 2022, look for the broad roll-out and adoption of products designed to be able to be both safe and even smart, ranging from input devices, interlock switches, relays, PLCs/PACs, I/O, actuators, contactors, AC drives, and motion controllers.
Virtual Commissioning Converging having Digital Twin
Advanced ruse tools allow for products, generation systems, devices, and work cells to be simulated virtually to test and validate physical techniques prior to assembly and installation. Moreover, the particular virtual commissioning (VC) of production software, an established technology and method, is merging using the more expansive scope from the online twin. VC is typically an one-time validation of an automated production program. In contrast, typically the digital twin represents an ongoing analytical and optimizing process that takes place in current. Today, ARC is seeing the convergence of established VC technologies with all the more recent emergence of this concept together with implementation associated with the digital camera twin around industries. While VC represents the simulation and modeling of equipment and development systems for you to virtually confirm the method and the controls that automate it, often the concept regarding the electric twin is definitely broader within scope and additionally involves capturing sensor data files from physical machines not to mention systems inside operation and using that details to create simulations present in real time.
VC can be the initial step throughout bringing your production technique to operation and is some part involving the overall online digital twin process. Because of its timely characteristics, a fabulous digital twin can simulate a system while it is detailed. This allows manufacturers to help monitor the system, create models for adjustments, and help to make changes towards the system. Advanced virtual ruse applications offered today allow users connected with digital twin systems to optimize output systems and also assets in the field in real-time. Additionally, simulations of bodily products as well as assets permit for design and style improvements simply by product engineers.
Within 2022, look for additional wise manufacturing remedies that leverage both VC and internet twin technology converging together to end up being deployed that will better replicate, predict, optimize, and maintain goods, assets, and production methods.
Other Trends to Watch
Other potentially transformative technology trends and approaches that ARCH Advisory Group is following right now include, among others, smart vision devices and video analytics; additive manufacturing becoming more mainstream in formation environments; your growing application of 5G networks here in industry, system, and savvy cities; the exact containerization with apps; plus lifecycle management/optimization for linked assets. ARC Advisory Group will always research in addition to evaluate most of these latest solutions and methods and looks forward in order to witnessing their very own impact on the handheld transformation for industry, structure, and wise cities.
To learn a lot more about upcoming trends, please consider attending the Annual ARC Industry Forum .