April 19, 2023

By: Kris Krishnamoorthy S and Ajita Walia

The digitalization of manufacturing has heralded a renaissance by infusing digital technologies into every step of its lifecycle. Data and intelligence have emerged as the most potent drivers of this transformation by offering valuable insights to exponentially impact efficiency, safety, and sustainability and offering opportunities to monetize information. While most enterprises have embarked on such transformation journeys, only a handful have succeeded in realizing value at scale. Even fewer have managed to harness the power of ubiquitous intelligence to create new business models and deliver amazing customer experiences.

Why is realizing value at scale so difficult? Legacy manufacturing processes, systems, and data solutions contain data gaps, data quality and latency issues, and data silos that impede timely and accurate data dissemination to the relevant stakeholders. Fragmented deployment of point digital solutions solves local problems but hinders value realization at the enterprise level. On the one hand, leaders focus on shiny new solutions like predictive maintenance and fail to consider ground realities and what it takes to weave them into the operating processes. On the other hand, they fail to appreciate the true potential that data can unlock in the long run and settle for incremental improvements.

Today all manufacturers have access to cost-effective technologies that can surface real-time data of every aspect of manufacturing and edge solutions for intelligent decision-making to drive manufacturing excellence. Our experience shows that digital transformation in the manufacturing industry requires a programmatic approach. One that combines the power of digital technologies, data, and AI while accommodating the ground realities of a manufacturing function to define a pragmatic roadmap to becoming an Advanced Manufacturing Enterprise (AME).

An AME is a company that leverages digital technologies to achieve high levels of automation, digitization, and integration. It further emphasizes collaboration with suppliers and customers to integrate their value chains, increase transparency, and create customer-centric products and services. AMEs are characterized by their ability to rapidly adapt to changing market conditions, innovate continuously, and deliver superior products and services to their customers.

LTIMindtree’s Manufacturing NxT

Manufacturing NxT is LTIMindtree’s solution for accelerated digitalization of manufacturing. It is built by practitioners with vast experience in all phases of the manufacturing lifecycle. Manufacturing NxT brings manufacturing maturity models, assessment kits, reference architectures, and edge-to-experience smart manufacturing solutions to help accelerate digital transformation in the manufacturing industry. Snowflake Manufacturing Cloud powers it with prebuilt KPIs, edge data acquisition, data management, KPI monitoring, and advanced analysis capabilities to drive value through data collaboration with and outside the enterprise. It can start delivering value in a matter of weeks.

Manufacturing NxT seamlessly leverages your existing technology assets to deliver hyper-scaler platforms and data products. Each layer of Manufacturing NxT adds a progressive level of digital maturity to your manufacturing capability. Integrated visibility provides near real-time visibility into the plant’s assets and operations. Integrated shop floor provides a unified view of shopfloor equipment, work-in-progress material, and workers, creating a cohesive and transparent picture of your shop floor operations. AME optimizes manufacturing operations across the value chain by integrating information across the shop floor and from outside the enterprise boundaries to vendors and customers. This information is curated to provide the quickest visibility to all manufacturing stakeholders and provide them with the context necessary to make the right decisions to drive manufacturing excellence.

Rohit Kedia, Chief Business Officer for Manufacturing, LTIMindree, said, “Over the past few years, Snowflake has transformed the way in which enterprises utilize cloud technology to derive valuable insights from their data assets. It is my belief that the Snowflake Manufacturing Cloud will similarly enable manufacturers to harness the power of their IT and OT data, to achieve unparalleled levels of efficiency and quality, while forging new paths for data collaboration and monetization within and outside the organization. LTIMindtree’s Manufacturing NxT solution has been built with extensive expertise in Snowflake data engineering, coupled with a practitioner’s knowledge of manufacturing processes, and incorporates our experiences and insights from some of the most complex manufacturing digitization programs. Manufacturing NxT on Snowflake Manufacturing Cloud will enable enterprises to unlock value from manufacturing data in a matter of weeks and lay a solid foundation for becoming an Advanced Manufacturing Enterprise.”

“By combining the power of Snowflake’s Data Cloud platform with LTIMindtree’s manufacturing expertise, we are enabling manufacturers to seamlessly integrate IT and OT and leverage data for smarter decision-making across the value chain,” said Tim Long, Snowflake’s Global Head of Manufacturing.

Manufacturing NxT distinguishes itself by delivering rapid value to customers through a unique combination of prebuilt connectors, customized data models for specific use cases, industry-specific dashboards, and easy-to-deploy plug-and-play solutions that require minimal coding. This streamlined approach accelerates the transformation journey for clients, enabling them to achieve their goals with increased speed and efficiency.

Solution Highlights

Enhancing Manufacturing Maturity

Manufacturing NxT is a persona-specific solution that helps in effective decision-making at different stakeholder levels, enhancing their experience and productivity. The solution gives real-time global, regional, plant, line, and equipment-level views for C-level executives, VPs, plant managers, supervisors, and operators. The real-time asset, application health, and manufacturing processes data form the foundation of prebuilt uses cases like Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and yield improvement, scrap reduction, and energy management. It allows users to identify the root cause of production inefficiencies, enabling them to take corrective actions. It’s advanced analytics and AI capabilities help manufacturers predict failures and prevent unplanned downtime.

Manufacturing NxT takes a results-oriented approach, focusing on key performance indicators (KPIs) in manufacturing while aligning Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) with each solution step to ensure tangible economic value for the enterprise. This value-driven approach enables dynamic reprioritization of scaling efforts, allowing for maximum value capture at every stage of the journey towards becoming an AME.

Summary

Leveraging the expertise of manufacturing practitioners and the cutting-edge capabilities of Snowflake’s Data Cloud, Manufacturing NxT on the Snowflake Manufacturing Cloud offers a practical and value-oriented approach to scaling digital manufacturing maturity. This solution empowers enterprises to accelerate their transformation into AME, combining industry knowledge with the power of Snowflake’s cloud-based platform.