COVID-19 has wreaked havoc in ways no one could have anticipated. It has behaved like a monstrous, unrelenting hurricane or a highly destructive, uninvited houseguest that has long outstayed its welcome.
There is no doubt COVID-19 has ushered in sickness and death at numbers uncharacteristic in a modern society. Not since the 1918 outbreak of Spanish Flu has the world seen such dramatic infection and fatality numbers over such a short period of time. Although initially compared to the common flu, its wrath has infected over 48 million and claimed over 780,000 lives in the U.S. alone, according to the statistics reported on December 1 by the Centers for Disease Control. It has also noticeably deepened political divides as sides have ferociously fought measures, including lockdowns and an array of mandates, intended to protect their physical well-being. And, it has forever changed what have long been considered normal operating procedures in personal and professional lives.
However, it is quite possible there is a bright side to COVID-19 considering its impact on how manufacturers value technology. COVID-19 has dramatically impacted the rate of investment in digital technologies. It has removed trepidation around trying young and in some instances truly emerging technologies. It also ushered in the first serious commitment to robust remote technologies – not only within the office environments, but on the plant floor as well.
As such, we are naming COVID-19 rather than any person under consideration as the IndustryWeek 2021 Technology Leader of the Year. Don’t agree? Hear me out.
Sparking Early Investments, Reinvigorating Manufacturers
COVID-19’s impact on manufacturing technology undeniably began in 2020 as a swarm of manufacturers across an array of industries demonstrated amazing agility in making successful pivots. In doing so, manufacturers strategically leveraged whatever technology was already in place – in addition to bolstering investments in intriguing and arguably underused technologies (most notably additive manufacturing) – to address dire shortages in critical medical equipment, test swabs and personal protection equipment. The efforts here were well documented at IndustryWeek. The pivots demonstrated the resilience and character of American manufacturers.
Of course, early investments went well beyond the emergency pivots. For instance, remote technology investments, which ramped up during widespread lockdowns, were equally expansive. Investments in next-generation office technology skyrocketed, enabling knowledge workers to remain productive from home environments. This surge unfortunately contributed to the ongoing chip shortage.
Manufacturers also embraced a host of solutions designed to provide secure remote access to the plant floor, often tapping into comprehensive IoT systems that enabled monitoring and facilitated timely decision making. These early investments also boosted experimentation and acceptance of AR/VR/MR headsets to provide skeleton shifts with the ability to make on-the-fly video connections with offsite subject matter experts. These tools provided seamless access to documentation, work instructions and video assets needed to complete tasks at hand.
Even though most manufacturers have since returned to “normal” operations, use of these technologies has remained intact or intensified as companies continue to find new and creative applications.
Transforming Timelines, Yielding Results
To claim that a digital transformation was not on most manufacturer’s radar pre-pandemic would be at best misleading. Most manufacturers knew it was inevitable. Yet, the road to digital transformation was often a long-term endeavor riddled with pilots and hindered by failure to attract needed budget. There was also a lot of confusion around what digital transformation even involved and which technology investments would actually matter to the business going forward.
COVID brought clarity to digital transformations and shattered the timelines with warp speed. This is consistently clear in the results of survey after survey. According to a recent McKinsey global survey of executives, companies have accelerated digitization by three to four years.
And, according to a heavily cited report by Twilio that surveyed 2,569 enterprise decision-makers about digital transformation, the pandemic’s impact was almost unanimous (97% agreement) with respondents saying COVID-19 was responsible for a 6-year acceleration, on average, of digitalization efforts.
How did this happen? Going back to the McKinsey report, “When respondents were asked why their organizations didn’t implement these changes before the crisis, just over half say that they weren’t a top business priority.” Simply put, COVID-19 did not just put digitalization on the table, it cleared the table, making digital transformation the top priority.
The C-level commitments meant operational needs assessments were able to quickly break through typical barriers. Financial restraints lessened with the Twilio survey showing that 79% increased budgets for digital transformations. Organizations bypassed routine pilot phases and went straight to deployment. Manufacturers recognized the issues holding them back and elected to push through with a “fail fast” mentality, when necessary, to get the right digital solutions in place.
Although larger manufacturers like Mars, Stanley Black & Decker and Wabtec have been eager to share the stories of their digital transformations, successes are not limited to industry powerhouses. As the survey results demonstrate, manufacturers of all sizes and across all industries have implemented dramatic changes.
Stu Carlaw, chief research officer with ABI Research, echoes these sentiments telling IndustryWeek that the first three months of lockdowns saw more technology evolution than in the last three years as CEOs looked to bolster share prices with good stories, shore up operations in uncertain times and maintain as much positive cash flow as possible in challenging market conditions.
Some interesting areas where ABI Research noted a lot of movement include:
- Autonomous goods vehicles in factories
- Rapid retooling and manufacturing flexibility to enable new product lines much quicker than the norm
- Simulation and digital twins to model and manage assets
- Private LTE and hybrid cellular for on-campus communications
- Cobots for flexible manufacturing and capacity improvement
- Low code and no code AI and ML for more end-point assets
- Distributed computing and hybrid computing allowing for less cloud-centric processing and more control at the edge and on premises
- Last-mile delivery automation and smart warehousing to address growing supply chain pressures
- IoT in general has experienced a lot of uplift in terms of asset connection and associated services
- Localization services for assets with precision location becoming much more important; debate seems to have swung from 5G as a localization technology back towards Wi-Fi and other shortrange technologies
“At the same time as this has happened there has been this tech acceleration, we have also seen some of the backbone technologies adjusting to support this. This is evident in some of the heightened attention being paid to cybersecurity, especially in IoT and 5G, as well as aspects such as OpenRAN, Wi-Fi 6, telco cloud, AI, simulation, analytics and device management,” Carlaw says. “Technology is the go-to response in order to alleviate some of the more physical asset pressures. We see this as (in the main) an acceleration of well-established trend. Importantly, we don’t see this slowing down either – it looks set to gather pace for the foreseeable future.”
Notable Process Improvement, Despite Controversy
Although the end product has faced undeniable and seemingly unrelenting resistance, the desire to dramatically slow down and ultimately move past COVID-19 infections has, perhaps permanently, changed how the U.S. develops, tests, manufacturers and distributes vaccines.
Controversy aside, the vaccine has been remarkably effective in delivering on its promise of protecting a vaccinated population from hospitalization and death. When the Delta variant hit the U.S., it put the vaccine’s efficacy to test. While regional hospitalization spikes surfaced, the fully vaccinated have overwhelmingly avoided hospitalization. Specifically, the CDC released a report stating unvaccinated people are 29 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19.
Why is this important? Prior to the COVID-19 vaccine, the fastest vaccine ever developed was the Mumps vaccine at four years. When following the 5-stage process to develop and then release a vaccine in the wild, on average it takes a minimum of 10-15 years with 2-7 years spent in discovery and pre-clinical trial phases of development. With the COVID-19 vaccine, the first emergency use authorization was issued in just 11 months.
According to a July 2021 Science News article by Rachel Lance, “What was jettisoned was not the science, or the safety tests, but rather the wait time baked into the development process — waiting for results and waiting for regulatory approvals.”
The need for a super quick development process also opened the door for an exciting vaccine breakthrough using mRNA technology. Two of the vaccines actively distributed in the U.S. market, Pfizer (received formal FDA approval in August 2021) and Moderna (operating under emergency use), each elected to use mRNA technology. Unlike traditional vaccine methodologies, mRNA focuses on teaching cells how to make a protein that triggers an immune response to produce antibodies capable to protecting patients from infections.
Digital transformation within the vaccine development process played a role as well, explains Emerson Group President Jim Nyquist. “Going through the process of compressing vaccine development for COVID-19 is helping the industry rethink all the regulations.”
The type of flexible operations a digital transformation affords are crucial for vaccine manufacturers. Using COVID-19 as an example, as the virus mutates, manufacturers need to be able to quickly bring new drugs online using those same production lines.
“Automated batch processing and automated recipe management are crucial because they allow manufacturers to change and have a very adaptable and flexible plant,” he says. “Also, the digital twin can play a big role because while you're modifying the plant itself, you can model changing the logic, changing the recipes and training operators so that as soon as the new drug receives clinical trial approval, the plant can begin production. Automating the recipes and automating (the) facility(ies) is key to replicating the golden batch.”
Bottom Line
While everyone is surely ready for COVID-19 to end, its impact on societies and business environments is equally undeniable and impactful. While the pandemic has taken far too many lives, it has also added new life to a manufacturing environment that was ready for transformation.
Cheers to the 2021 IW Technology Leader of the Year, I guess. Now, please go away.
