Photo: ShutterstockAccording to
PwC’s latest
Global Industrial Manufacturing Sector Outlook, the share of industrial manufacturers who expect to ‘highly automate key processes by 2030’ will more than double, from 18% to 50%. The study, which surveyed 443 senior executives across 24 territories, found that the global US$16 trillion industrial manufacturing industry ‘sits at a historic inflection point, with artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced technologies, automation, and industry convergence accelerating and fuelling opportunities for growth and productivity’.
Ryan Hawk, global industrials and services leader at PwC US, said: “As tech adoption and automation accelerate, advantage will shift from who has tools to who can adopt them and orchestrate them the fastest. Agile, tech-enabled, and future-fit manufacturers already have an edge, with the divide between those who are tech-enabled and those still operating with patched up systems to widen even further. The questions for manufacturers are do they know what to adopt and are they at a level of readiness to adopt it?”
The survey revealed that ‘future-fit’ industrial manufacturing companies — the fastest, most agile, and most innovative 20% of companies identified in the survey — have a clear edge. “Currently, a median of 29% of these companies have highly automated processes, compared with 15% of other companies. By 2030, that share is expected to rise to 65% for future-fit, versus 45% for others.
Advanced tech “Future fit companies are also more likely to use advanced tech in key parts of the value chain. For example, 46% of these companies use advanced tech in product design and development, versus 34% for other companies; and 37% of future-fit companies use it in production and operations, relative to 28% for others.”
Even as industrial manufacturers look to technology and AI to drive growth, the report finds that manufacturers are also increasingly expecting growth to come from new activities beyond their traditional core. Some 44% of total revenue is projected to come from outside the manufacturing of industrial and consumer products by 2030.
Mr Hawk concluded: “Tech enablement and automation will surge across the sector, yet the most meaningful performance differentiation will come from how coherently those technologies, including AI and automation, work together. If manufacturers are to unlock the growth and productivity opportunities afforded by new and emerging technologies, they must treat AI and other advanced technologies as a system, not a set of projects and advanced tools in isolation.”