The needs of each consumer and each business are individualistic. Satisfying these needs quickly, efficiently, and at an optimal cost is the holy grail of discrete manufacturers. The concept of individualization is exemplified in the personalized therapies that modern medicine is attempting to deliver. Personalized therapies are optimized to be safer; they result in better patient outcomes and promise lowered cost. However, patient-centricity and personalization are complex. If not managed correctly, they can cause a higher cost of medical products. Thus, personalized products [WB1] are ideally suited to the concept of lot-size-one. The concept shifts the traditional “once size fits all” production approach and moves to tailor-made products, packaging, services, and delivery. The concept of lot-size-one is seeping into the manufacturing of everything: footwear, sports goods, apparel, pet supplies, jeweler, paper products, home lifts, electronics, etc. The challenge is to manufacture these customized products economically in several variants and on an industrial scale.

Thriving in the new paradigm of customization with digital manufacturing

Meeting the demand for customization has become especially difficult because the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted supply chains. The benefits of lot-size-one have become more challenging to visualize, model, and achieve. The variables that need to be factored into defining an effective solution have become asset-centric, and the efficacy of the solutions will be dictated by a silo-less data strategy and digital manufacturing systems that leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).

The Five R’s of digital manufacturing

We know the pandemic has re-structured the way organizations manage their business. Today’s businesses must operate by clustering their approach around 5Rs: Responsible, Responsive, Reliable, Resilient, and Re-skilled (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 The 5Rs are critical for improving customer experience and are defining discrete manufacturing in 2021.

The guiding principle is modeling and designing systems that maintain focus on the 5Rs while managing demand-driven production of customized products. Doing so will close the gap between the new demands being placed on business: economically efficient mass production and customized made-to-order production.

Success with this approach depends on separating operational steps previously connected and conflated in one automated and continuous process. When the operational steps are “unbundled,” work cells are free to be reorganized into workgroups. These work cells enable planning for highly individualized manufacturing. Naturally, quality requirements will form the basis for the models used to manufacture such products. Overall, this will necessitate that all system components work as a single organism with every process and product parameter centrally accessible to all within the enterprise.

The new vision: Building a learning and adaptive system

Lot-size-one orchestrates the entire business flow of an organization to fulfill the needs of customers. The essential components that drive the orchestration are:

1. Digital manufacturing framework
2. Digital thread
3. Rationalized data – AI / ML framework
4. Individualized persona-based intelligence sharing

Figure 2 summarizes the components that drive the orchestration to take manufacturing beyond its traditional boundaries.

Based on the process model and historical data sets, AI and ML will carry the burden of optimizing process parameters for known product configurations continuously and use them for new product configurations. AI and ML are essential for a “learning and adaptive system” that is oriented to meet the tenets of lot-size-one.

Challenges

Two challenges need to be met to put in place a dynamically adaptive system that learns:

1. Creating a production process that is flexible, economical, and quality-focused. To reduce production costs, future process chains will perform all necessary processing steps for manufacturing continuously and economically while providing maximum flexibility for product individualization and maintaining specified quality standards. 

Figure 3 illustrates critical areas in a modern digital factory that would enable a highly flexible, lot-size-one operation.

2.Equipping the system with powerful data management tools to ensure product quality and meet the requirements of consumers. Tenets that will need to be retained in this context are:

• Quick and flexible operational modeling aided by AI
• Comprehensive in-line monitoring solutions
• Dedicated small series quality control and process control systems
• Data mining software library for process parameterization and optimization

Conclusion

Lot-size-one offers a lot more than just consumers getting what they want — it could change business models and the map of global commerce. Maybe the concept of large, centralized manufacturing plants churning out mass-produced products will be seen in the future as antiquated and unsustainable. The concept of smaller and more distributed manufacturing plants closer to consumers reflects the promise held by Industry 4.0 technologies to make manufacturing more relevant.

For the manufacturing organization of the future to harvest the potential of Industry 4.0 technologies, the 5Rs are essential. At their intersection lies the ability to make lot-size-one a reality. Such an organization would have innovativeness and competitiveness woven into its DNA, be ready to deliver exponential growth in productivity, and make the customer experience the hallmark of its purpose.

Arumugam Selvadurai
Consulting Partner

Selva is a manufacturing digital evangelist specializing in operations optimization.  He works on digital solutions that span all aspects of manufacturing operations using digital solutions such as Industry 4.0, cloud, AI, cognitive systems, and IIOT. He has over 20+ years of experience in consultative development with global corporations, both large and midsized.

He has long years of experience inside manufacturing facilities in all aspects of operations, from design to high-speed assembly lines. Selva is contributing to Wipro’s manufacturing business growth as a consulting partner and domain expert.