How the COVID-19 pandemic is taking the industry to a new level of transformation

*By Lucas Alves Souza e  Joao Vicente Ribeiro Ferreira 

The coronavirus pandemic affected the vast majority of companies. Even so, it is possible to say that each impacted organization was affected in a different way: some were forced to paralyze their lines completely, while others are having to work harder than ever to meet a strong and unexpected consumption demand. Anyway, in one case or the other, companies are realizing that they need to innovate to become more agile and flexible, and that it is time to change the concept of how their projects are converted into products.   

A clear example of this transformation is the production of mechanical fans. As hospitalizations for COVID-19 increase and ICU beds become scarcer, we have seen the importance of this equipment in saving lives. It is not by chance that governments around the world are promoting a real race to buy as many fans as possible, and thus meet the needs of their populations. Demand has increased enormously, but production is not always able to keep up with and serve everyone quickly enough.   

To overcome this scenario, today, there is a frantic global effort to manufacture more breathing machines, including the redirection of several production lines already existing in other segments for the production of fans and other personal protective equipment (PPE). The objective is to ensure that these products are being produced with quality and in First Time Right.  

In other words, we are running and changing like never before, learning to do what we already did, but in a thousand different ways. Because? To answer, we can remember two lessons from Charles Darwin for our survival as a species that can be very useful for the survival of our companies.   

We have five pillars that are defining a new era of industrial transformation. The first lesson is that “the survival of one organism depends on the survival of another”. After all, it is clear that a company depends on its customers to survive and, likewise, on its suppliers and business partners. Please note that this is one of the five pillars in defining this transformation, the vertical and horizontal integration of the value chain. That is: integration of planning, optimization and operation of the value chain, supporting demand-driven production.  

Darwin's second lesson comes from adaptation to ensure survival: “in the history of mankind (and animals too), those who learned to collaborate and improvise were the ones who prevailed”. This is also one of the five pillars: it is necessary to maintain Engineering as the connection between design, design, manufacture, operation and maintenance of products and services, using the fusion between the real and virtual worlds.   

Integrating the virtual and the physical is something already in progress when we think of Cloud Computing, for example. The problem is that companies have accepted to have CRM and ERP in the Cloud, but the concept of Cloud Engineering still follows with a low market acceptance. With this, several points of product planning, projects, infrastructure, factory and production layout that could be executed via Home Office today they end up being opportunities only for corporations that have already accepted to question their true digital transformation before COVID-19. This serves a third pillar of industrial transformation: the development and integration of flexible and reconfigurable manufacturing systems, fully integrated into the companies' business.  

The fourth pillar is people's participation. Basically because it is people who develop products and services, with the aim of serving people and improving the quality of life for humanity. This brings us, however, to the fifth pillar of this list: Innovation, which increasingly requires the integration of different areas of knowledge and the joint use of different technologies.  

In this scenario, collaboration is an extremely relevant factor to generate innovation. It is worth mentioning, for example, the production of mechanical fans: today, companies from different markets are working together to develop new cheaper and simpler projects. They are driven by the purpose of sharing the information needed to produce solutions that can collaborate to save people's lives.  

It is the collaboration that will allow us to produce a vaccine in record time (a product that did not exist) and to produce respirators (existing product) to meet the current demand efficiently, without ergonomic or logistical restrictions. We have an extremely challenging scenario and the union of efforts and the integration of resources is what will take us further.  

How will we do this after the pandemic? The answer is the application of the factory of the future today. With the transformation of the industry, production engineers, planners, production process developers and shop floor managers are able to continue working safely and productively, having a true Virtual Twin Experience across the entire manufacturing environment. . While Industry 4.0 kept its focus on digitizing the past instead of imagining the manufacture of the future, the Industry Renaissance is concerned with society and its relationship with it - becoming, perhaps, a new, more modern and competitive industry model.  

It is worth noting, of course, that the Virtual Twin experience goes far beyond what some companies “sell” as such. Having a 3D model of the factory or production line is nowhere near the real opportunity opened up by this technology. On the contrary, the experience of Virtual Twin proposes a total replication of the manufacturing environment, including the behavior of employees and machines, task execution times, connection to equipment and the entire plant. This capability offers the chance to use the virtual environment to predict and plan any and all expansion or changes to be applied to tasks. It is the chance to know the complete operation of the operation.  

The pandemic is increasing the urgency for digital transformation in companies. It will be essential to think about new factory layouts, new internal processes, new work models, etc. This is a fact and whoever does not adapt will disappear.    

The companies will probably go through three stages in the transformation process: facing the pandemic, which has been occurring in Brazil since March; the return to “normality” as the restrictions become more flexible; and, finally, the preparation for a “new normal”, which nobody knows yet how it will be. The transformation we mentioned can help in the three stages, depending on how quickly it is adopted and implemented by companies, and the use of Cloud solutions is a way to accelerate the adoption of this new model, at a time of limited resources for investments in CAPEX.  

The fact is that we already have this technology available today and we can benefit from it, but we certainly won't be able to work in the same way as before. Insanity, according to an old saying, is to always do everything the same way and expect a different result. This will no longer be acceptable in this new world, where nothing can be done without collaboration and a constant focus on innovation.